#even in canon hes vitriolic towards them at least when he first learns about them | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

eleanorfenyxwrites · 3 years

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Where We've Been (Ao3)

My friend @megachewbecca requested something set post-canon between Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng in which they talk about "why they have decided to channel all their disappointments with themselves into each other". I don't think it came out exactly like that but they do still have a conversation about Stuff!

[Masterpost]

“Oh great,” Jiang Cheng snaps with as much venom as he can muster - the type that typically sends his intended target scrambling for cover, and/or has his disciples watching on in undisguised glee for whatever verbal flaying is about to begin.

However, said venom is only occasionally directed at his current target (though it’s happening increasingly often simply through an increase in exposure to each other due to certain Wei Wuxian-shaped influences). In all the times that it has been, however, he’s only ever received the same style of response.

“.....Mn.”

Jiang Cheng’s eye twitches and he refuses to acknowledge the headache already starting in his left temple.

“Don’t fucking start with that. I know you talk.”

Of all the people to be magically trapped in a cave with, Lan Wangji is absolutely without a doubt at the very bottom of his list. Below a fierce corpse, even, because then at least he’d have something to take his frustration out on. But no, he’s stuck with Lan fucking Wangji, because the universe is cruel like that. And this mere days after he had promised Wei Wuxian he would do his best to be more civil to Lan Wangji even though it was the so-great, so-wonderful, so-righteous Hanguang-jun who had a problem with him.

At the risk of sounding childish - he started it!

He walks a quick perimeter around the cave, trailing his hand along the wall to feel for any openings he could possibly miss in the uncertain light of the fire talisman in Lan Wangji’s hand. He’s nearly back to where he began when he feels a breath of moving air and he quickly moves towards it only for his entire arm to sink into what looks like solid rock. He yelps and jerks his arm back from whatever emptiness is on the other side of the illusion and then starts again when Lan Wangji is suddenly at his side between one breath and the next, utterly silent.

Jiang Cheng shifts away from both him and the wall as Lan Wangji steps closer to raise his free hand, pressing it forward until his hand sinks into the ‘rock’ just as Jiang Cheng’s had. He glances at Lan Wangji only to find his expression as impassive as ever from what he can tell, and he’s just opening his mouth to ask what he’s thinking when he suddenly just. Steps forward. Straight into the wall.

“Hey!”

Before he can think better of it, Jiang Cheng stumbles after him, disoriented in the sudden dark and then again by the sensation of pressure and cold closing in on him on all sides. The claustrophobia hits hard and fast as he takes another stumbling step forward - to be caught by a shockingly sturdy grip at his elbow.

“Careful,” Lan Wangji intones, holding the talisman a little higher as he looks around and Jiang Cheng shoves his hand away to straighten himself out, cheeks burning.

“Is it really such a good idea to go wandering around strange magic caves?” he grouses to the unmoving pillar of Lan Wangji’s back. His stupidly tall guan is poking up above his head and Jiang Cheng is seized suddenly with the childish urge to throw something at it - nothing big, just a pebble or something. Just to see if he can hit the point of it from behind. Just to see if he can make the perfect Lan Wangji do something besides walk around looking all...stately.

He absolutely refuses to acknowledge that it was similar desires that had motivated Wei Wuxian to tease and taunt his future husband in their teenage years - this is extremely different.

“We have wandered dangerous places before,” Lan Wangji replies smoothly and the full sentence is genuinely shocking. Jiang Cheng tries to remember the last time Lan Wangji had said a full sentence to him and he comes up blank. For years it’s been nothing but monosyllabic words, one of his plethora of hums, or one of his little duckling-esque juniors covering his ass and talking for him (as if Jiang Cheng can’t understand when he’s being snubbed with or without their ‘translating’).

In the surprise of being spoken to at all, it takes Jiang Cheng an extra beat or two to realize what he’d actually said, and when he does it brings him up short. He knows precisely what he’s referring to, of course, but his mouth quicker than his brain and all he can manage to do is croak a hoarse,

“What?”

Lan Wangji turns back to look at him, face inscrutable in the flicker of the fire talisman, though his eyes are, as always, sharp and keen.

“It was once our common goal to find Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji replies smoothly. “We faced dangers during our search, including Wei Ying himself when we found him.”

“He wasn’t -”

“Dangerous? Hm.” Jiang Cheng can’t help but scowl at the obvious skepticism in that fucking hum. He’ll never understand how Wei Wuxian finds Lan Wangji’s hums endearing (which he has said on far too many occasions) rather than absolutely infuriating.

“He wouldn’t have hurt us!”

“Debatable. He was barely himself, and he did not know we were present at first. It was possible we would be harmed.”

Jiang Cheng doesn’t have a good reply to that so he doesn’t bother trying to find one, he simply starts walking and tries not to hate that Lan Wangji doesn’t even miss a beat as he falls into step beside him, still obnoxiously perfect.

“Alright fine,” he says when the silence becomes unbearable, roughly ten steps later. “So we worked together for a little while two decades ago. So what?”

“Your skills were admirable then, I know they have only improved over the years. I doubt we are in much danger in a cave in a well-populated region. It will not hurt to learn what is here.”

Fuck Lan Wangji, Jiang Cheng thinks with as much vitriol as possible. He can’t say why it irritates him down to his core to be complimented by him, even obliquely, but honestly he’s pretty sure he’d prefer the stony, angry silences he’s been subjected to for so many years instead.

They walk in silence for a little while then, both on alert for something out of the ordinary. It’s Jiang Cheng who feels it first again and he stops in his tracks, holding one hand out and following a thready, barely-there stream of cooler air to a wall, utterly indistinguishable from the rest of the space around them.

“We should mark where we’ve been, just in case,” he says as his hand sinks into the rock like it’s made of pudding. The mental image adds an odd layer of unpleasantness to the cool pressure of it, the idea of it...congealing around his hand making him wrinkle his nose a bit in distaste.

“Mn.”

Jiang Cheng loses the battle against rolling his eyes but he says nothing only because Lan Wangji follows it up with a gesture that leaves a signature on the solid part of the wall next to the illusion, the characters glowing a gentle blue.

“Any way you could do one of those back at the beginning in case someone needs to come hunting for our bodies?” he asks as dryly as he can manage to try to get a rise out of his companion, but all it earns him is a flat look that Lan Wangji doesn’t break as he repeats the gesture only to send the talisman darting back up the path the way they had come.

He’s pretty sure it would be physically impossible for him to scowl any deeper than he does when Lan Wangji waves him ahead towards the false wall, the silent ‘after you’ somehow full of so much sarcasm it’s very much toeing the line of insulting, at least in Jiang Cheng’s book.

This time he’s prepared for the discomfort of the illusion and he walks smoothly through it. He turns to watch Lan Wangji join him and he’s startled to realize he doesn’t even seem to walk through the wall. One moment Jiang Cheng is alone on the path in the pitch black and the next Lan Wangji is beside him looking as unruffled as ever, fire talisman still glowing between his extended fingers held at shoulder-height.

“Do you have more of those?” Jiang Cheng asks begrudgingly with a nod at the light. He knows it’s Wei Wuxian’s invention, and that he of all people has no business asking to use it when he’s spent so long hunting down any trace of his brother’s work to destroy it utterly. He also knows that Lan Wangji is equally aware of this, and yet he simply reaches into the front of his robes to withdraw another talisman between his fingertips and hold it out for him to take. He studies it for a long few moments once it’s in his hands, but he can find nothing suspicious in it at all. It should be a good thing. It is. But it also only serves to make him feel foolish, as he has many times since Wei Wuxian’s return.

“It will not harm you,” Lan Wangji just has to break his silence to supply, because of course he fucking does, the asshole.

“I know that!” Jiang Cheng snaps. He leaves off investigating the talisman any further to stuff it in the front of his own robes, just in case they should get separated. “You think I don’t understand Wei Wuxian’s inventions? I know them better than anyone.”

“Debatable.”

“Fucking debate it then!” he challenges as he storms off, Lan Wangji somehow seeming to walk sedately even as he keeps pace with him.

“Wei Ying is a prolific inventor. He uses our home as a workspace. He describes each of his new inventions to me in detail, and I offer assistance when necessary to refine his processes.”

“Fine, you know his inventions better now, but I’m the one who spent 13 years chasing down all his notes and the morons trying to use them for themselves!”

“Recognition of the work for the purpose of destruction does not in itself lead to understanding that which you are destroying.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?!”

“I assist him with all of his techniques, old and new, demonic and orthodox. I do not, nor have I ever, attempted to ruin his work - unlike you.”

Jiang Cheng stops in his tracks and whirls around to face Lan Wangji who finally has a different expression on his face, though how he managed to make himself look even colder than before Jiang Cheng has no idea.

“ ‘Unlike me’,” he repeats, his voice utterly flat in another way that usually has people scrambling for cover, though of course Lan Wangji seems completely unmoved.

“We are fundamentally different, Jiang Wanyin.”

“Yeah no shit,” he mutters as he turns around again to continue forward at an angry, too-quick clip that Lan Wangji effortlessly keeps stride with, the fucker. “Those people who tried to follow in his footsteps were murderers.”

“Mn. They were irresponsible. Wei Ying has expressed regrets that his notes found unworthy hands to wield them.”

“And yet not one other person ever tried to stop them! It was just me this whole fucking time! What else was I supposed to do, just let them run rampant?!”

“No.”

Jiang Cheng grinds his teeth and tightens his grip on Sandu as he’s forced to acknowledge that he understands what Lan Wangji was really conveying even through a single syllable - that he recognizes that he had done what he felt he had needed to do to protect the innocents that were his responsibility, and yet there’s still a note of judgement in his voice that puts Jiang Cheng’s hackles up.

“But?” he prompts through his teeth.

“Disposing of Wei Ying’s notes out of anger that they were being misused by others was unnecessary and self-serving.”

“Well they’re gone anyway and all your disapproval of my methods isn’t going to bring them back.”

Lan Wangji stops all at once and Jiang Cheng walks on a few steps ahead before he realizes and stops as well, turning back to face him with a scowl.

“What?”

“Illusion.” Lan Wangji turns to run his fingertips along the wall to his left, moving slowly until the wall swallows them up. He withdraws to sketch another marking talisman and leaves it on the wall before stepping forward into the illusion, leaving Jiang Cheng to scramble after him in the dark, guided only by the blue talisman.

“Stop doing that!” he blusters as soon as he gets through. “It’s fucking dark in here and you have the light!”

“Mn.”

“And stop doing that!!” he outright shouts at Lan Wangji and his stupid fucking nothingness. He’s as blank and icy as ever and Jiang Cheng suddenly realizes that he has officially had it. “What is your fucking problem?! You said it yourself that we’ve worked together before, we fought together during the Sunshot Campaign, what’s so different now?!”

Jiang Cheng finally goes quiet as Lan Wangji’s expression..shifts. Outwardly, he doesn’t really seem to change that much, especially not in the uncertain light of the talisman. But there’s something about his bearing, his presence that changes and it’s only then that Jiang Cheng realizes that what he’s been faced with so far is Lan Wangji’s distant disapproval. What he’s looking at now is..anger. The sort of anger that has given Lan Wangji as fearsome of a reputation in some circles as Jiang Cheng has earned for himself.

He refuses to back down as Lan Wangji practically stalks closer, each step precise and deliberate until he’s right in front of him, glaring from under furrowed brows and looking down his nose at him in a way Jiang Cheng viscerally hates.

“You killed Wei Ying.”

It’s delivered utterly flat, cutting and sharp at the edges. Through his teeth, through the proper Lan version of a snarl. It leaves Jiang Cheng speechless, floundering for a moment through the slice of it in his heart. It hurts as much as it has any time someone has dared to point it out to him - he thinks back to that day of Wei Wuxian’s reappearance in the mountains and the Lan kid who had reminded him he’d killed Wei Wuxian himself and he wonders suddenly just who it was who had taught the Lan juniors that part of the story. It had been common knowledge in the aftermath of the battle, but he realizes now that Lan Wangji, extremely influential and vital to the education of the next generation, has been holding that grudge close to his heart for twenty years. Who knows what else he’s taught them about that awful day.

“What?”

Now Lan Wangji really does snarl, lips pulled back over his teeth and nose wrinkled in disgust as he steps forward and Jiang Cheng takes an automatic step back only to be crowded back against the wall.

Lan Wangji was right - they’re more dangerous than anything in this cave could be, and Jiang Cheng very much doesn’t like getting that reminder when he’s apparently the prey.

“You killed my Wei Ying. You failed him.”

“ ‘Your Wei Ying’?!” he retorts as he finds his metaphorical footing again. “That was news to me when he suddenly popped back up, you know! You sure as fuck didn’t bother making that clear back when it could have helped him.”

It’s instantly clear that he struck a nerve and he presses the advantage as something shutters in Lan Wangji’s furious glare.

“You want to talk about who failed him? You didn’t manage to protect him either! You hid in your mountain and you Lan thought you were above the whole world, and by the time you realized what was happening it was too late to protect him!”

“I know.”

The admission draws Jiang Cheng up short and at least some of his anger bleeds out of him as Lan Wangji’s glare fades a little further and he drops his eyes down somewhere around his shoulder, though he’s still got him crowded up against the wall and a glance down shows that Bichen is half out of her sheath.

“You know?”

“I have discussed it with Wei Ying in detail. He has forgiven me.”

“He’s forgiven me too!”

Lan Wangji’s gaze darts up to meet his again, ice cold but no longer distant - this cold judgement is now very personal. Jiang Cheng is chagrined to realize he already misses the detached, uncaring attitude of mere minutes ago.

“He has forgiven you. I will never.”

Jiang Cheng takes a deep breath in when Lan Wangji steps back to give him his space again, and if it shakes a little then that’s his business alone.

He heard the rumors back then. That Lan Wangji had killed to protect the Burial Mounds. Their paths had crossed many times over the years in their dual pursuit of hints and rumors of demonic cultivation, of whispers of the Yiling Laozu returned as a vengeful spirit, or reincarnated, or miraculously alive and gathering disciples. He had assumed then that their goal had been the same, but now he wonders if when he had been seeking to squash any evidence of his brother’s work, Lan Wangji had been chasing it in the hopes of finding more. Finding truth in the rumors. Finding Wei Wuxian.

He can admit to himself, deep down in the private spaces left inside of him that no one is allowed to see, that he had been disappointed each time the rumors had proven to be fake, or each time a new demonic cultivator was nothing but a cheap knockoff of Wei Wuxian using scraps of his notes to try to chase the full scope of the power he had developed. He had been angry with himself - furious, even - for that disappointment, but that didn’t make it any less real. All those years of searching, hunting, and in the end it had gotten him..nothing.

It was Lan Wangji who had won in the end. Wei Wuxian lives with him in Cloud Recesses. He visits Lotus Pier now that they’ve repaired at least the bulk of the damage to their relationship over the years since Wei Wuxian’s and Lan Wangji’s wedding following the revelation of Jin Guangyao’s plotting. Sometimes he stays for months on end, treating Lotus Pier as his home and returning to Cloud Recesses for short visits. But in the end he always returns to Gusu. To his husband.

He always leaves Lotus Pier - and her master - behind.

“Well, you won in the end anyway,” he says now into the loaded silence around them. He refuses to look at Lan Wangji as he steps away from the wall and continues along the path, lost in thought. “He chose you and Cloud Recesses over coming home when everything was over. Congratulations.”

Lan Wangji is silent at his side for quite some time as they walk, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t bother trying to break the quiet this time. They continue this way for a while, communicating with gestures when they find another illusion, and then yet another. It’s as they’re walking through the tunnel behind this fifth false wall of the night that Lan Wangji finally speaks.

“He longs for Lotus Pier.”

Jiang Cheng scoffs and tightens his grip around Sandu. “Well no one’s stopping him from coming home.”

“You misunderstand.”

“Speak plainly then, who can know what you mean when you hardly say anything?”

The judgemental silence that follows makes him grind his teeth even though he doesn’t know quite what he’s being judged for.

“He longs for the Lotus Pier that no longer exists but for in his heart and his memory.”

Jiang Cheng has to stop in his tracks at that and take a deep breath in, hold it, let it out slowly. His grip on Sandu doesn’t loosen, but some of the tension in his shoulders does as they slump ever so slightly under the weight of his heavy silk robes - robes befitting his status. He hardly notices that weight anymore, he’s had far too many years of carrying it, but sometimes it feels like he’ll be crushed under the burden of them.

“We rebuilt it using the old builders’ plans. It’s nearly identical to what it was before.”

“You are aware that is not the point.”

“Enlighten me then, oh great Hanguang-jun.”

The next silence feels..considering, and Jiang Cheng spares a thought to be dismayed that he’s learning how to read Lan Wangji’s many silences, whether he wants to or not (he doesn’t). He hates it when Wei Wuxian is right, and in this moment he’s forcefully reminded of how many times his brother has asserted that it’s possible to read Lan Wangji as easily as anyone else if one only knows what to look for. Jiang Cheng has never been interested in learning what to look for himself, but it seems he’s going to anyway.

“Wei Ying lives life in each moment. It is unusual for him to dwell in the past unless forced to. He is my opposite. I understand well the pain in his eyes when he returns from Lotus Pier. He is unsettled by the lack of familiar faces, the easy happiness of the past, and by the reminders that time has been cruel in its passing.”

Jiang Cheng’s mouth drops open but he hastily shuts it again when Lan Wangji looks at him, eyes once again unreadable.

“I believe if he could somehow find a way to travel through time and return to when the Lotus Pier of your childhood was the only home he knew, he would. If he could return to when you and Jiang Yanli were his world, he would. The knowledge that this version of Lotus Pier is lost to him for good is not an easy burden to bear, and each visit is a reminder of his aches.”

“Stop.” Jiang Cheng turns his head in an attempt to hide that his eyes are suddenly stinging and his throat tight. It’s useless to hide, he knows, but his pride won’t allow him to cry in front of Lan Wangji, not like this. “You think he’s the only one who feels that way? I live there. I live it every single fucking day.”

“Then you understand.” Jiang Cheng says nothing in reply. It’s not really a question - they both know that he does. He wouldn’t have been so determined to remake Lotus Pier so exactly if he didn’t. “Do you begrudge him his attempt to live without this pain?”

“Yes!”

“Then you are hurting him further.”

Jiang Cheng musters up a glare through the sting of his sorrow, but he’s not sure how effective it is considering his eyes are still fighting desperately to shed their tears. Either way, Lan Wangji meets his glare with something that looks frustratingly like understanding. He doesn’t want Lan Wangji to understand him. He wants to argue with him, fight with him, force him to admit that for all their opposites they’re also fundamentally similar in one way that matters more than anything else -

They love Wei Wuxian.

It takes on different flavors, different appearances, but the fact remains that they love him down to their bones.

“Do you know why Wen Zhuliu was able to destroy my core?” he suddenly asks. If Lan Wangji is surprised by the change in subject he doesn’t show it. He simply shakes his head after a moment of consideration. “We were running, we were hiding, but Wei Wuxian left to get medicine for jie, she had gotten a fever after our parents...after everything. He told me to stay put in our room at the inn, but I didn’t. I saw Wen soldiers out in the street, they were looking for us and they spotted him, they were going to drag him away as soon as they realized who he was. I couldn’t...I let them catch me instead. They took me instead.”

His deepest secret. Something he hasn’t even told Wei Wuxian in all their talks over the last few years, and he, for some reason, has decided to tell fucking Lan Wangji, of all people. It is, he supposes, the last defense he feels he has. He loves his brother. He sacrificed his life for him. It’s not his fault that it didn’t stick, that Wei Wuxian would rip his very soul apart with his own two hands if he thought it would protect the people he cares about.

“He was never supposed to lose his. None of this was ever supposed to happen,” he finishes, unable to raise his voice above a crackling whisper. “I never meant to hurt him.”

Silence falls again, but for the first time tonight it feels...almost comfortable. Not quite companionable, but it’s not anything else really either. It simply is, the weight of the moment and his admission too heavy to cheapen with words.

He starts walking again when he feels capable of putting one foot in front of the other and Lan Wangji walks beside him. They go on through another tunnel of the cave that looks much the same as the others, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t even care if they’re lost, if they’re going in circles, if they’re not doing much of anything at all. It’s nice to just walk, to move, to not be alone with his thoughts in the dark as he has been far too many times over the years.

“You know Sizhui,” Lan Wangji says after a while of this, and Jiang Cheng snorts without much amusement.

“The polite kid who always talks for you like I don’t know you well enough to know you’re telling me to go fuck myself in your head? Yeah.”

“Mn. He is my son.”

That brings Jiang Cheng up short again and though he doesn’t stop walking he does stumble a bit and turn a shocked glare on Lan Wangji, still walking blithely along.

“Your son?!”

“Mn. His existence was kept quiet outside of Cloud Recesses. It is my understanding that outside of the Sect he is now known as an inner family disciple, but it is suspected he is a cousin.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“That is intentional, for his safety.”

“Why for his safety? Is being your kid that dangerous? When did you even...have a kid? With who?”

The glare Lan Wangji gives him out of the corner of his eye can only be described as ‘scathing’ and Jiang Cheng will admit that he kind of admires it. Envies it, really. It’s a pretty good glare.

“I adopted him. He was Wei Ying’s before he was mine.”

Jiang Cheng stares blankly ahead again as he tries to reconcile that, come to terms with it. All at once, he thinks back to the single time he had been to the Burial Mounds when it had still been a safe haven for the Wens. When a bright-eyed child had clung to his leg, and Wei Wuxian had swooped in to pick him up, to hold him and talk to him like a parent, to scold him with a smile on his lips and offer him gentle affection before sending him on his way.

He thinks about Lan Wangji defending the Burial Mounds from the cultivators who had wanted to sack the place after Wei Wuxian’s death, and he thinks about the Wens who had sacrificed themselves at Jinlintai.

He thinks about Jin Guangshan bragging about wiping out the remaining Wens in one fell swoop, and how if he was drunk enough, if the right person asked him to tell the story, he would boast that he had made sure that every last person had accounted for the crimes of their family. In his accounts, though, there had never been mention of a child - and his retellings had been painfully detailed.

“He’s that kid from the Burial Mounds. A-Yuan,” he whispers with dawning horror. “He’s Wen Yuan?!”

“Mn. Should you reveal his identity, no one will find your body to put it to rest.”

That makes Jiang Cheng snort again and this time he actually is a little amused. “Threats, Hanguang-jun? Not terribly righteous of you.”

“Without Wei Ying, A-Yuan was the only reason I could find to continue living. I would kill without hesitation for him, for Wei Ying.”

“You already have,” Jiang Cheng points out - everyone knows what had happened when Lan Wangji had defended the Burial Mounds, and Jiang Cheng at least is aware that Lan Wangji had also killed at Nightless City. He had seen him protecting Wei Wuxian, killing any cultivators who tried to get near enough to stop Wei Wuxian from playing that damned flute of his, to stop him from killing more and more of their own. He wonders how many people now, if any, know that some of the deaths from that night that have been laid at Wei Wuxian’s feet rightfully belong at Lan Wangji’s.

“Mn. I have.”

“And you know if Wei Wuxian could hear us talking about...all of this, he’d tell us both that he didn’t ask us to, that he doesn’t deserve all of this.”

“Yes.”

Jiang Cheng sighs and shakes his head, irritated with his brother and his self-sacrificing tendencies even now, all these years later because he just never fucking learns.

“Does it really hurt him to come to Lotus Pier?”

“It saddens him, but there is happiness as well. He was afraid of losing you as well even though you both live. He is relieved he has not. It is..complicated.”

“That’s an understatement,” Jiang Cheng mutters under his breath, but he knows Lan Wangji hears him anyway. They continue in another silence, and a few minutes later Jiang Cheng finds another illusion. “What the hell is going on in this cave?” he finally asks, exasperated once they’re on the other side of it in yet another identical tunnel.

Lan Wangji doesn’t answer, he merely keeps walking forward and Jiang Cheng is forced to follow him with a scowl firmly fixed on his face.

“I will never forgive you for killing Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says into the quiet. “However, it saddens him to feel that he must consistently choose between us. I will not make him choose any longer.”

“You were complicit in it too, you can’t keep pinning this just on me you know!”

“I will do what I will. However, you are my brother-in-law, and you have given Wei Ying happiness in this life.”

“Yeah well I hate you too, but I guess there’s not much I can do about it either since the idiot married you.”

“Indeed. A truce, then.”

“Fine. Truce.”

Jiang Cheng glances sideways at Lan Wangji to find him looking at him similarly out of the corner of his eye, and after a moment the corner of his mouth twitches into the barest hint of a smirk.

“What?”

“You should hunt with Wei Ying more often,” he replies and before Jiang Cheng asks him what he means, he stops to sketch another talisman in the air, this one a bright blood-red, and when he releases it there’s the sensation of a pressure he hadn’t even noticed in the air releasing and he works his jaw to pop his ears as he looks around only to realize that they’re back in the room they had started in. And on the wall where he had spotted the first illusion there are a series of marks glowing blue, all in a line one right after the other - the markers for each false wall they had passed through.

“What the fuck?”

“Awwww Lan Zhan! No fun, he would’ve kept going for hours,” Wei Wuxian suddenly pouts and Jiang Cheng whirls around to find his brother leaning insolently against the wall where the entrance to the cave had been sealed - and is sealed no longer. He looks past his brother’s shoulder to find that the entrance is once again open to the air beyond it, the smell of their campfire at the entrance filtering into the space along with the sound of the juniors from their sects laughing and chatting, relaxing after their hunt earlier in the evening.

“Mn.”

“Wei Wuxian!”

The man in question dances away from his lunge with a laugh that rings off the stone around them.

“A-Cheng!!!” he sing-songs, drawing the sound out as he darts over to hide behind his husband standing still in the center of the room. “Did you like my illusion? I’ve been practicing. Lan Zhan didn’t you tell him it was an experiment?”

“He did not ask.”

“Yes I fucking did!!!” Jiang Cheng shouts and he makes another grab for Wei Wuxian, fully intending to yank him into a headlock at least, but he’s stopped by Bichen held across his path and Lan Wangji raising an admonishing eyebrow at him.

“You asked what was happening. The answer was ‘illusions’, too obvious to bother with. You did not ask whose, or for what purpose.”

“I hate you both,” Jiang Cheng snaps because that’s a Wei Wuxian-style answer if he’s ever heard one, just..Lan-ified. He refuses to think about the possibility that those two are more suited to each other than anyone might suspect and instead he turns to stomp over to the entrance with the intention to go pilfer alcohol from Wei Wuxian’s stash. He deserves it after being forced to have an emotional conversation with Lan Wangji, of all people.

The acoustics of the cave mean that the voices behind him reach his ears even as he walks up the tunnel that leads to the forest outside.

“Did you have a good talk with him, Lan Zhan?”

“Mn.”

“Thank you.”

“No need.”

“Aiyah I know, but thank you anyway. The two people I love most in the world should get along.”

“A-Yuan and I get along very well.”

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian laughs and thankfully Jiang Cheng steps free of the tunnel into the clearing just beyond it before he has to hear any more, his ears and heart burning with the knowledge that Wei Wuxian loves him. That he finally has his brother back, even if it’s in a way he would have never chosen for them.

“Jiang-zhongzhu?” a mild voice asks, too gentle to startle, and he turns his head to find Lan Sizhui waiting nearby, a nervous expression on his sweet features, still just a little round with boyhood though it will likely only be another year or two before he loses all trace of baby fat whatsoever and matures into the man he’s quickly becoming along with the rest of his generation.

He meets the boy’s wide, earnest eyes and finds his defenses crumbling as he sees in him the boy who had hugged his leg and looked up at him with a curious little smile right in the middle of the misery of the Burial Mounds. He sighs heavily and turns his whole body to face him properly, his hands on his hips as he stares him down. To his credit, Lan Sizhui doesn’t cower or fall back at all, he simply waits patiently for Jiang Cheng to speak his mind.

“You might as well call me Jiujiu,” he harrumphs and Lan Sizhui’s expression falls open in surprise (and seriously, this kid was raised by Lan Wangji? He doesn’t see it.) “What? My stupid brother is your diedie isn’t he? You don’t have to, but..You can. If you’d like to.”

“Alright. Jiujiu,” Lan Sizhui replies, smiling and clearly pleased. The quiet moment is broken almost immediately by - who else - Wei Wuxian.

“DIDI!!!” he shouts, startling a nearby flock of birds, and it’s all the warning he gets before Wei Wuxian practically throws himself at him to cling to his side. “I knew you cared! Now you have to buy him presents for all his important occasions and we’ll bring him to Lotus Pier for New Year’s and -”

“Get off me!” Jiang Cheng growls as he shoves at Wei Wuxian without much success.

In the midst of their tousle, neither of them notice Lan Wangji drifting to Lan Sizhui’s side to press a comforting hand to his shoulder and gently guide him back in the direction of the camp, a rare, pleased little smile on his lips.

#The untamed fanfic #Lan Wangji & Jiang Cheng #Wangxian #Lan Wangji #Jiang Cheng #Wei Wuxian #Lan Sizhui #<- very briefly #post-canon #reconciliation

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mobius-prime · 4 years

Text

209. Sonic the Hedgehog #141

Return to Angel Island (Part 4): Ultimate Hero

Writer: Karl Bollers Pencils: Jon Gray Colors: Jason Jensen

So things are… bad. Hunter is back and has a shiny new weapon to boot, which appears to vaporize anyone in his path. Sonic gives Knuckles a ride back to the echidna refugee camp at high speed, with Knuckles still doubting his ability to even be able to help without his Chaos powers, while the refugees flee Hunter's attacks. Remington tries to insist that he wants to remain behind to protect the Master Emerald at all costs, but Archimedes tries to dissuade him, instead trying to convince everyone to fall back to the emerald's chamber to defend it more directly. Finitevus isn't interested in Archimedes' pleas, but they're interrupted by the approach of Hunter.

No, Remington! I was honestly so upset by this, as Remington is one of my favorite recurring characters of the comic. Finitevus doesn't look too concerned, though… Archimedes meets Lara-Le, Wynmacher, and Saffron in the Master Emerald's chamber, informing them of the fate of the two outside, and they get ready to defend the emerald with their lives - but just as Hunter breaches the door, Sonic and Knuckles show up to help with the defense. Hunter throws some kind of fast-moving mechanical ball towards Sonic to keep him occupied and out of the way, and Knuckles charges in only to be once more overcome with agony from his proximity to the Master Emerald. Outside in the main cavern, the other heroes return from Dingo City only to be horrified at the devastation they see in the camp. Lien-Da becomes enraged, blaming Locke for "foisting the emerald" upon the Dark Legion, but Julie-Su has finally had enough and gets in her half-sister's face, yelling that she willingly chose to accept the emerald because she wanted the power it would bring her. You go, Julie-Su!

And right there we have the true reason behind all her hatred and vitriol. Of course these things always come down to daddy issues. Still, it's the first time we've ever really seen any true emotion from Lien-Da, apart from her usual scheming and power grabs, and it adds a depth to her character that she's been lacking thus far. Back in the Hidden Palace, Lara-Le rushes to Knuckles' side as he slumps to the ground, and Hunter approaches gleefully, raising his weapon for a death blow. However, a sudden pink light engulfs Knuckles, who rises into the air and begins to crackle with energy. He's overjoyed, announcing himself to the room not as Knuckles, but as… Super Knuckles! That's right, his Chaos powers have returned, and he's ready to stop Hunter's rampage, grabbing him and bursting through the roof of the palace.

Oh yeah - Knuckles straight up kills Hunter. It's one of the very few times we actually see one of the heroes of this comic intentionally end someone's life - but I think in this case, considering what kind of person he is and what he's done, killing Hunter is entirely justified for the greater good. As he descends back down to earth, the surviving echidnas all begin chanting "Avatar!" while the remaining dingoes retreat in a blind panic. Lien-Da is furious to see her hold over the refugees slipping, but Knuckles and his friends are clearly excited to see his Chaos powers return, with Archimedes revealing that he was certain that all Knuckles needed to reawaken them was to remain in close proximity to the Master Emerald long enough for it to power him back up. However, I'm actually not so on board with him regaining his powers. I really liked the dynamic of Knuckles losing the very thing that made him so special, and having to start from basics once again, learning how to fight without a superpowered edge. We've seen several different stories where Sonic lost his own super speed, but always got it back in the end - how interesting would it be to see a story where the hero never recovered their powers? And Knuckles, given his backstory, is the perfect candidate for such a plot - he never asked for his abilities, and they clearly brought him great pain and trauma as they developed. This would be an amazing direction to take his character arc, with Knuckles torn between the life he's always known, and the chance to start anew. After all, while he developed his latent Chaos powers without having a say in the matter, and despite the pain they often brought him, he did become accustomed to the effect they had on his life in a way, learning to control them to some degree and finding out more and more about why he had them. But the circumstances of his birth also ensured that he wouldn't have any real say in his own destiny, and this was always clearly troubling to him. Removing his powers for good would have put him in a fascinating position where on the one hand he would obviously be upset at losing such a great source of power, one which he's been told is his birthright, but on the other the loss of this power would leave him much freer to decide his own path from here, rejecting the path others have set out for him and discovering who "Knuckles" could be without others trying to define who he was for him. I don't know, I just think there's a huge missed opportunity here to explore more in depth who Knuckles could ultimately end up being without his Chaos powers being his most defining feature.

But alas, Knuckles has his powers back once more, and he's fulfilled the prophecy of the Ancient Walkers to boot. Eggman contacts the heroes via hologram once more, claiming that now that he knows where the Master Emerald is hidden he'll be there straightaway to steal it, but Sonic merely crushes the communicator and Locke enlists the help of the Legion once more to move the Master Emerald someplace else. Knuckles asks after Remington, but Archimedes sadly informs him that he and Finitevus were both casualties of Hunter's rampage. Lien-Da curtly tells Knuckles there's no time to mourn friends right now… and then quietly, when no one can hear her, adds "…or family." Wait, what? So, this is something that has actually been hinted at here and there for a while now, but so vaguely that one might not pick up on the hints unless they were already in the know. Remington's father is actually Kragok, which would make Lien-Da his aunt! This was never outright confirmed in any canon material until the Sonic Comic Encyclopedia many years from now, but I figured I'd go ahead and explain it right here, since, well, Remington ain't around these parts anymore. But yeah, that's why Lien-Da has always acted slightly weird around Remington. Anyway, Knuckles begins to say goodbye to his father, but Locke sharply asks him what he's intending now, seeming very upset at the idea of Knuckles leaving.

I love this. It's about freaking time we finally saw some serious conflict between Knuckles and Locke. For too long Knuckles has always dutifully followed whatever his father told him to do, but now, with a year away from the island under his belt to give him some real perspective, for the first time he's standing up for what he believes in instead of just doing whatever the Brotherhood wants, and Locke is clearly feeling threatened by this display of independence. To be fair, I can see Locke's point, as the island is clearly still quite devastated by Eggman's occupation and they could use someone like Knuckles to help them clean up, but still, I do think Knuckles has the right idea, as taking down Eggman for good seems like a better idea than just cleaning up after him - pulling up the weed by the roots, you know? Knuckles does seem quite sad as his father stalks away and vanishes through a warp ring, but he merely says his goodbyes to his mother and Wynmacher before joining Sonic and the others to head back to Knothole. For now, the day is saved, and everything seems fine and dandy - but what's this? It seems something quite disturbing is happening in Eggman's main base…

This. Is. Horrific. Say hello to the Egg Grapes, everybody, because this isn't the last time we'll be seeing them! We can see that apparently, these things have three functions: "Energy Drain," "Mind Eraser," and "Toxic Infusion," none of which are explained but all of which sound terrifying. We also get to look at some of the poor unfortunate souls trapped inside the pods. A few are just background characters from previous issues, but others are far more heartwrenching. We can see the three other surviving fire ants, minus Archimedes, meaning Archimedes is likely the last of the council now. We can also see, of course, Remington in front there, which again just makes me sad as I love Remington. However, perhaps the worst one is hidden in the back: Simon. As in, Simon, Julie-Su's adoptive father. Floren-Ca is also in there somewhere, just not shown on panel, which means that without even being aware of it, Julie-Su has now become a true orphan. It's incredibly tragic, as she'd just begun to get to know her own family after being separated from them for so long, but the island was invaded shortly afterward, and a year later, they're just… gone, being tortured to death inside one of Eggman's awful experimental devices without Julie-Su ever getting a chance to say goodbye. This is, I think, the moment where I realized just how truly terrifying comic Eggman is. Anime Eggman is hardly a threat at all, very much the type of villain who's more invested in their fights with their heroic nemesis than in actually taking over the world. And Eggman from the games, while he is genuine about his plans for world domination, has never actually committed mass murder, at least that we've seen. Sure, he's used small innocent animals as living batteries, but never actually mass tortured half the populace of an entire island just for the hell of it. This is where the comic begins to get truly dark, as we realize just what a terrifying megalomaniac we're facing here. No more silly jokes, no more half-assed villainy - Eggman is a monster, and the Freedom Fighters have to take him down for good lest he destroy the entire world.

Mobius 25 Years Later: Scenario

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Steven Butler Colors: Jason Jensen

Oh, but, y'know, we could also just jump forward into a boring future where everything is fine apart from reality beginning to tear itself apart. Granted, this issue's story actually has more real plot than the rest of the entries put together, though also granted, that isn't much. We're finally going to address that whole "collapse of spacetime" thing, as Knuckles leads Sonic to Rotor and Cobar's hidden laboratory to discuss the issue. Cobar is shocked that Knuckles knew the location of his lab, and Knuckles casually mentions that he likes keeping tabs on Lien-Da's favorite scientist wait excuse me what?! So all this time, Cobar has been in Lien-Da's employ, and we just never heard about it until now? Why are you so mistrustful of Lien-Da and yet totally trust the word of her favorite scientist when it comes to all this world-ending stuff? Ugh, I feel like I've spent far too much time and energy pointing out the many, many plot holes of this arc, so we're just going to move on like everything is fine. Rotor and Cobar explain the whole shebang to Sonic, while we get a short and useless scene of Julie-Su and Sally being unable to sleep and reiterating once again their worries for their husbands, and when we flip back to Sonic he's shocked to hear that he's the cause behind the acceleration of entropy on Mobius!

He tries to argue that it might have been the Dark Legion or someone else who had done a lot of zone-hopping in the past, but the two scientists insist that their experiments show that it was his fault. I really don't see how arguing over fault is going to help, especially when Sonic had literally no idea that actions he took when he was fifteen were going to someday contribute to the end of the world twenty-five years after the fact, but eh, again, we never claimed this story made any sense. Knuckles and Sonic leave, with Knuckles telling Rotor and Cobar to find a solution and fast, and as soon as they're gone a panel slides open in the wall to reveal who else but Lien-Da, who has listened in on the whole thing and is very curious about why exactly Cobar has been hiding all of this from her. Hmm, suspicious! Do you think we're finally about to get an answer about what treacherous deeds Lien-Da has been planning this whole time? Ah, c'mon, this is a Penders story, of course not!

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #sth 141 #writer: karl bollers #writer: ken penders #pencils: jon gray #pencils: steven butler #colors: jason jensen

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tiergan-vashir · 5 years

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Hey Tiergan, do you have any advice or links of advice that I can give to my friend? They are dealing with someone trying to blend ooc and ic together to get what they want out of my friend. And I don’t know how to phrase how toxic this is without upsetting my friend deeply.

Going to go out on a limb and assume that you are facing the following scenario: The asshole in question is mixing IC and OOC, because they - out of character - really want a specific IC result. To achieve this, they’re use the RP itself as a tool to try and pressure, force, or guide the RP towards their desired IC outcome instead of the fun, spontaneous, consensual thing it’s supposed to be.

In fact, they may be using the RP as escapism and feel entitled to specific behaviors from your friend, which is dangerously ripe for abuse.

If this is the situation you’re dealing with, then perhaps it might help your friend if you pointed how it is totally normal to have ideas and head-canons that you would be excited to see happen if they were to occur in RP between you and your friends’ characters ...with the caveat that you don’t expect it, feel entitled to it, or try to railroad the RP in that direction.

You hope these ideas might happen, you don’t know if they will happen, but you’re willing to see how things go and explore where the characters take you.

OR if you really, really would love to see if a certain head-canon is actually possible between your characters without leaving it up to chance - you just have an open OOC conversation to see if your RP buddy would be up for it. If yes? Awesome. Go forth and create great stories together. If no? Drop the idea entirely. It’s that simple. RP is supposed to be a fun relaxing hobby. It’s collaborative storytelling. You are creating a narrative together with your friend and it should be a team effort.

What’s not normal is using IC actions and roleplay as a tool to try and force another player’s hand or pressure them towards a specific RP result, even if the second player is not entirely okay with it and perhaps hasn’t even consented. This is intensely manipulative behavior and it robs other people of not just their agency over their characters, but their choices and freedoms in how they would like to enjoy what should otherwise be a fun, relaxing, not-super-serious hobby in a video game.

This behavior is not all that different from all the stories we’ve heard of creepy fuckboys using RP as a tool to pressure others into sexual situations they didn’t really ask for. In fact, I would say creepy fuckboy RPers are experts at weaponizing RP to pressure other people towards the RP outcomes the fuckboys desire.

You can tell when another RPer has lost sight of things and is potentially being a massive abusive shit when they stop having regular open chats with their partners about what direction their partners might like to see the RP could go in. Or they don’t seem all that interested in their partners having an active and equal say over in what happens to their character in RP. Or most importantly - they rarely stop to check or gauge whether their partners are is still having fun!

The reason why assholes have so much success using the roleplay itself as a tool to force people to behave a certain way IC or take the story in a certain direction, is because it’s very easy for them to wave a hand and say “It’s just RP.” “This is what my character wants.” “I can’t help that this is what my character feels!”

They pass the buck to the fictional character, so they can evade being held accountable for poor behavior while conveniently forgetting that “My RP partner is really uncomfortable with where the RP is going” is an OOC problem that can only be solved with the OOC solution of having some honest, open communication about where you both would like the RP to go in so you both have fun instead of plowing ahead at the expense of your friend’s comfort.

If the two of you talk and it turns out both of you want dramatically different things in RP and there is no compromise where both of you can fully enjoy yourselves - you shouldn’t be RPing together and should be finding different, more compatible RP partners. Full stop. There’s no harm in realizing that that perhaps you and your friend are not aligned in what you both need to be happy in RP. If your partner wants all romance RP all the time with lots and lots of ERP and you hate it - then it’s okay to acknowledge that maybe you need to split ways and find people who like the things you also like.

If all of this ramble isn’t terribly useful without a clear example, here is a personal one I’ll share under the cut (NEVERMIND, TUMBLR’S CODE IS FUCKING GARBAGE. I’m sorry this is a massive post.) of what I went through with my first Romance RP in this community with a player I eventually just cut off entirely.

When I first joined FFXIV, I decided to try some Romance RP with a person who played a fellow escaped-slave capable of casting magic. This character was designed to be shy, submissive, demure, afraid to trust and fearful of being caught/sent back to their master, but ultimately also noble and working grow and learn to trust others in the big wide scary world.

However, if Tiergan (and by extension, I) did anything the player did not like, such as speaking to or befriending a person they perceived as a romantic ‘threat’, doing or saying anything they did not like, going to the ‘wrong’ place, or going ANYWHERE without them - their character would immediately respond with intense vitriol and rage, asserting that clearly Tiergan did not love them enough, did not care enough, and wasn’t trying hard enough. For if Tiergan truly loved them, he would stop talking to x-person, would stop going places without them, would stop doing or thinking certain things and taking certain actions.

They would say all the things they knew would draw out a specific response out of my character and have him redoubling his efforts doing exactly what was desired of him.

I should point out all this character’s actions above are intensely emotionally abusive IC and all of that would be fine if I had signed up for it. If I knew it was going to be that way, and consented to it, I would’ve been fine. But I didn’t. And it was clear after a certain point that this player was not intentionally playing an emotionally manipulative, abusive character - but that they themselves were emotionally abusive. They were simply trying to weaponize the RP in a way that would force me in the direction they wanted and and would punish Tiergan (and by extension, me) for not playing our role as the big beefy sexy warrior lover to their liking.

This player was also highly controlling. They wanted our characters to be together at all times and they wanted to be involved in all of my RP - even in situations where it wouldn’t make any sense for their character to come along or I didn’t have permission to bring them. If Tiergan left without them, whether because he (or I) needed space or I literally wasn’t allowed to bring them, because it wasn’t my plot or my event - Tiergan was punished, guilt-tripped, and told all sorts of terrible things.

The IC threat this player used the most often when Tiergan did something they didn’t want was that they would “return back to their master”, citing “at least my master truly loves me” - because they knew it was the fastest way to get Tiergan to break down and beg for forgiveness. Things eventually built up to the point of violence where the character electrocuted Tiergan in his own metal armor out of anger of him not being the kind of lover they expected out of him.

They used their character’s extreme displeasure to trigger certain reactions out of my character that they knew Tiergan would have to make it easier to isolate me from any other RPer that they saw as a romantic threat, or stop me from engaging in any RP without them, or participating in any plot that they were not directly invited to, or doing anything they didn’t really want Tiergan to do - and it took me a while to realise something was wrong because “it was just RP”.

Hopefully all of this ramble helps somehow. It’s definitely a tricky, messy situation and your friend honestly might not realise they’re in deep shit until it’s too late depending on the level of manipulation. If they don’t listen to you, sometimes the best you can do is just let them know you are there as support and they can turn to you if they need. That way, if things go horribly wrong, they know they can turn to you for help.

Good luck anon.

#long post #advice #Anonymous #longpost #long long post

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spiftynifty · 5 years

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How come it seems like lm and jds can talk more candidly about their intentions regarding other ships like allurance and even k/l but not sheith? I don't understand why they can clarify things like allurance and how it was there from the beginning or flat out state that they never intended for k/l to be a thing, but when it comes to the topic of shiro and keith they won't just clarify what they did or did not intend/want their relationship to be? I'm confused by it. :(

Ooof this is an excellent question and I suspect a complicated one.

First off, they can be candid about Allurance because 1) it’s a hetero couple (and therefore “acceptable” to executives and conservative parents) and 2) it was strongly implied and built up for almost the entirety of the series before they officially, canonically, became a couple. There’s no ambiguity there. They can be candid about kl because Allurance technically “kills” the ship by virtue of existing, but more importantly kl is the fanship that they have been directly asked about on more than one occasion and probably straight up badgered about it more times than we’re aware of. When your production studio gets blackmailed in the hopes of making k/l canon, that ship is being brought to your attention.

Also, Afterbuzz is run by kl fans who have anti-like tendencies. They angle kl questions in nearly every interview, and I was pretty miffed by the way in this interview they heavily, heavily implied that only Sheith fans hated s8 “because their ship didn’t become canon” and yet in the same breath talked about how Allurance wasn’t good and came out of nowhere (something JDS delightfully shut down). In the live chat for the recent interview, people from all ship alignments kept begging the hosts to ask about why SK’s friendship wasn’t included in the final season. In the saltiest tone you can imagine, one of the more vocal kl hosts decided to answer the question (”they helped each other grow and evolve and since they’ve done that, we don’t need to see their friendship anymore, it got lots of screentime in other seasons”) and never let the showrunners actually speak on it, instead moving swiftly to another topic that aligned more with the hosts’ own interests. It was almost like she was afraid of what the answer would be. Was she afraid they’d say “well actually, on the matter of that, Sheith was our intended endgame” or was she trying to save them from having to talk about something NDAs prevented them from talking about?

So why CAN’T they talk Sheith? I have a few theories. This gets long and a little rambly, so I’ve thrown it under a cut.

1) Don’t ask, don’t tell. Except for post-s7, the showrunners themselves have never been asked about Sheith’s relationship in an interview. I think most Sheiths were afraid of rocking the boat and potentially upending a SK endgame by drawing too much attention to it. We were/are definitely the quieter side of the primary vld ships and honestly most of us were not expecting our ship to be canon.

But vld ships and the ship wars are notorious across geekdom for vitriol and death threats, and the creators didn’t want to add any fodder to either side. In the middle of production it would have benefited no one for the EPs to say, “yeah sheith is meant to be viewed romantically” or “no, we can’t go back and change the story to make that true”. Either one would have resulted in an uptick of harassment from antis towards them, towards other fans. And nevermind the production side where DW/WEP weren’t ready for even a hint of m/m until right before s7 dropped. It was only AFTER they got the greenlight on gay Shiro that showrunners could finally be vague and say “some people will interpret [sk] as brothers, others will say it’s 100% confirmed they’re in a relationship”. Which is, in my opinion, a pretty interesting way to respond to that question. But again, if that interviewer hadn’t been brave enough to ask it, I highly doubt it’s something that the showrunners themselves would have ever brought up.

2) Sheith was actually intended to be romantic, but was blocked. We know now that Adam being greenlit as Shiro’s boyfriend happened right before (like a week or less) before s7 dropped. This was a show that had been in production for almost 4 years by this point, and the showrunners stated they picked Shiro to be their rep early on in the process. When they planted that idea in executive’s heads is anyone’s guess, as is when the proper fight for it began. I suspect their immediate team of directors, writers, and in-house producers were well aware and supportive, but kicking that up the chain was another story. I also have a suspicion that it wasn’t until season 6 was complete that the matter was brought up because greenlighting everything we got in s6 knowing Shiro was gay the whole time puts a lot of eyes on Keith.

And really, it was Keith who was the problem all along.

In every version of Voltron, Keith is the main protagonist. He’s the leader of the team, the primary “image” of Voltron, and thus, certain things about him need to be maintained. I’m not sure if this is sheer coincidence or not, but he is the only person on the team who stayed visually the same to his OG counterpart. All of the other paladins have gone from white dudes (and a white lady) to POC, or have had a genderswap. There is much debate about Keith’s race with people creating their own headcanons but ultimately Keith can pass as white. While the handbook states Lance is Cuban, Hunk is half black-half Samoan, Shiro is Japanese and even Pidge gets “Italian”, Keith is just listed as... human. Which is a surefire way to not upset fans who have HC’d him as POC while also not-NOT saying he’s white. Everybody “wins”.

In addition I’m confident a major stipulation of the OG Voltron owners (the “gatekeepers”, as a few of the VAs and the showrunners themselves have darkly alluded to) was that Keith could not be LGBT. We know now he was meant to end up with Acxa, a fact that was already obvious to many of us from their Weblum meetcute. But that relationship was never scripted.

Setting aside the fact that the OG Voltron owners (WEP) didn’t want Keith to be LGBT, I’m sure executives at Dreamworks would have struggled with the idea as well. Shiro stans can come at me all they like about this but Keith was always meant to be the primary protagonist of the show, of every version of Voltron, and making the main, masculine hero of a well-trodden, oft-rebooted franchise gay/bi would have been an ENORMOUS move for animation. Making him end up with the other main, masculine hero would have honestly broken the internet and the minds of countless conservative executives, and been a major benchmark not just for cartoons, but ALL media. Animation often trails behind TV and movies in terms of social progress because something something “protect the chillllldrennn”. And right now I’m struggling to think of a popular live action TV show, or movie, with an older audience, where the main masculine hero is lgbt, and in a relationship with the other main masculine hero. Feel free to offer me examples in replies but the fact that I’m struggling to think of anything is pretty telling. In short, if this revolutionary move still isn’t happening for the live action 13+ audience, asking for it to happen on a cartoon with a 7-11yo boy demographic is like asking for the moon. Keith couldn’t be gay, because immediately it would have been obvious to anyone that he was already very much in love with the other LGBT character on the show. Hell, it’s already pretty obvious in canon that this is the case, and dodging the question about his sexuality is dodging the confirmation that he’s in love with Shiro.

I’d like to believe that one of the solutions to the Adam Problem that was proposed was that KEITH ends up with Shiro, but they were laughed out of the office. The pair’s incredibly close bond aside, it would have been the absolute easiest fix production-wise. They already have their shared history doing most of the legwork, all that’d have to be changed is:

-adding Shiro to the L/K scene in 8x01, just sitting there as Keith encouraged Lance.-Re-recording a couple of Shiro’s lines in 8x05 to make him seem at least somewhat upset that Keith was kidnapped-Showing Keith and Shiro hanging out in the video episode. You could just use the shot of Keith and Pidge but replace Pidge with Shiro.

And the best part is, you could change just one or two of these and then do the wedding epilogue you always intended (but write something that doesn’t insist Shiro retired) but with Keith instead of Rando. Not to mention, there is a slight, slight possibility there was a S/K scene (or two) cut along the way. I strongly disagree with the theories that have floated around about the “massive edits” done to s8, but I think there could be truth to the idea that a Sheith scene was cut to make room for Crew Member, or an effort made to downplay the Sheith friendship that comes off way more intimate than any interaction Shiro has with [man]. It’s more likely that SK scenes never existed at all in this season as the showrunners had to cave to pressures to “have more action”, had no idea what to do with Shiro besides relegate him to a stiff cardboard general, and perhaps had to follow strict instructions about the kind of friendliness an out & proud gay man could show to the men he’d enjoyed good interactions with before.

All this to say, the Sheith battle is messy. It’s fine for the showrunners to say “getting the greenlight for Shiro was a battle” because it’s a battle they won that makes everyone look pretty good. It makes Dreamworks look like they Learned Something and are going to be more open to LGBT content in future properties. It makes WEP look not-terrible because they can add “allowed a character who wasn’t really an OG Voltron character to be gay” to their list of “generous” things they allowed for this re-envisioning of their property. It’s self-congrats all around.

Blocking Sheith has the opposite effect. It reveals that WEP is homophobic because they could allow Pidge to be a girl and Allura to be black but making the hero a non-straight man? That’s TOO FAR. It reveals that Dreamworks higherups are homophobic because they weren’t ready for two LGBT protagonists, just one plus a background character with 3 lines who is literally never named. No one wins, and to be asked about Shiro and Keith and be honest about it could potentially be the showrunners saying, “god, we wanted to, but we were blocked at every single turn”. And thus DW and WEP are the outed villains of the story.

3) Shiro and Keith were never meant to be read as romantic. The showrunners don’t say anything because there’s simply nothing to say. Sometimes the most incredible ships are happy accidents. Sometimes people genuinely don’t realize what they’re doing. I felt a little disheartened watching the AB interview because the way they talked about wanting to include more [man], or how they “hoped viewers would read between the lines” re:Shiro/Curtains, was so casual and flippant it was like they genuinely thought most people would be fine with Shirando if only there had been more scenes between them, as though completely severing Shiro’s relationship with Keith and instead only showing scenes of Shiro bonding with a new character would come off as a good move rather than a baffling (and somewhat hurtful) one.

I do believe that certain directors were absolutely fans of the pair and angled in what they could. Chris Palmer is behind the famous “shiro loves you baby” art and responsible for the eps that include Shiro’s gay panic, the Sheith hug, “As many times as it takes”, Shiro falling into Keith’s arms, and “We have to stop, Shiro’s out there!!” among others. Steve Ahn was the director behind 2x01, 3x01 with heavily grieving Keith, Blade of Marmora, and the episode where Keith screams Shiro’s name so loud he astral projects and then Shiro holds his hands over the controls. He also got really soft when he talked about the pair in an episode of Form Podcast (before JDS kinda hastily shut him down). And even Eugene Lee, he directed The Black Paladins which is an episode so Sheith I still can’t believe it’s real, and 7x01, the other episode so Sheith I can’t believe it’s real. All three of these guys were the original series directors, which is pretty inchresting.

But that doesn’t mean the showrunners were necessarily onboard. Maybe it was really important to them to show a positive male friendship since that never happens in media, just as they felt having Allura sacrifice herself was a powerful feminist move. However the thing I keep circling back to is JDS’ early interview about The Winter Soldier and how if he ever got the chance to do that, he hoped it would be in the future when things could be more progressive, hinting that he wanted to throw more overt romantic undertones if he himself ever got a fight like that to write or direct. It’s pretty interesting that he wrote the Black Paladins, which mirrors the Stucky fight in Winter Soldier so much that it actually rotoscopes one of Bucky’s moves. I’d also point out that JDS’ favorite characters are Shiro and Keith, and I find it impossible to be a fan of both and not also be a fan of how much they love each other, and how much that love straddles the line between romantic love and friendship.

This got long, but I hope it was helpful. The likely final-ever showrunner interview will be on Let’s Voltron sometime this month, and I do hope that now that the series is over someone is brave enough to ask them, “so... what was going on between Shiro and Keith? In a perfect world, what would have happened there?”. In a way it doesn’t matter though. There is always the risk of them saying “nothing was going on there” and us agonizing over whether that was a lie to protect their careers or bald-faced honesty in the face of an NDA or fucks-given that might have expired with their contracts.

But I think the best we can hope for is the same situation that happened with the Avatar creators and that live action movie: 3 years from now when the NDAs are well and truly expired, JDS & LM may come out and say, “SO, on the matter of Shiro and Keith, it’s time to come clean.”

#sheith #vld meta #voltron #askspifty #it's still wild to me that people say they're brothers #like really i have questions about your siblings if that's the case #Anonymous

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nadziejastar · 5 years

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I hate Xemnas/Isa. It feels fucking gross and fetishy. I hate how there’s still parts of the fandom that still potrays Isa as his sociopathic counterpart, Saix. Even though, he did fucked up shit, he was a victim because of Xehanort. Plenty of people complained about the fandom treating Lea as if he still acted like murder assassin Axel, but the same doesn’t extend to Isa 🙄.

Why Axel Had a Good Redemption and Saïx Did NOT Have a Good Redemption

Xemnas/Isa? Eww. Yeah, it is really sad. I talked to someone a while ago who said that they always thought the Saïx/Axel friendship was totally pointless and just an excuse to give Axel more “drama” in Days. They also said Isa was a jerk in BBS and didn’t even know why Lea was friends with him. Their understanding was that Saïx was a jerk because he was a grown-up version of Isa, not a Xehanort-possessed version. They had no idea why he was even in the epilogue. They thought Lea had a good redemption, but they thought Isa had no right to eat ice cream with his “abuse victims”.

And sadly, I could understand why they came to that conclusion since the writing was just so bad. But while they hated Isa, I obviously feel the exact opposite. I think for a lot of people, the entire concept of Saïx simply went right over their head. And KH3 certainly did nothing to help, so that misunderstanding still persists. But it’s really not that hard to see where they were going with Isa originally. His character got treated SO unfairly.

Also, it’s funny you mention this. Just the other day someone got really mad at me on Reddit for “bashing” Isa’s character. I made a post not long after KH3 released criticizing the way Saïx’s arc was handled, just to see the general fandom opinion on it. Occasionally I will still get responses on that topic. This particular person said they had NO problems with Isa’s arc, and the only reason people criticize Lea and Isa being apprentices is because our “headcanon fanfiction” didn’t come true. They also said I was “sickening” because I said that I got the impression that Axel’s feelings for Isa were romantic. I just had “shipping goggles” on and was trying to “fetishize” a platonic friendship. And that’s obviously why I had issues with the way KH3 was written. People are stupid.

I actually saw that response about “fanfiction” a lot. Honestly, I think it’s a form of denial from some fans who know that there are valid criticisms to be had over the writing, but simply don’t want to admit it to themselves. They are emotionally invested in the idea that the story is perfect, and do not take kindly to criticism. When I brought up obvious plot holes, like why Xemnas never bothered to punish Axel or Saïx, even though he knew they were plotting against him, they would just dismiss it. “You can’t read too much into Organization politics”. I mean, come on. Really? 🤨

One person insisted that Nomura had NO CLUE where he was going with Lea and Isa’s story when BBS showed them trying to sneak into the castle. He insisted that Nomura made everything up as he went along, and therefore I had no right to be upset that this mystery girl was never mentioned or hinted at previously.

This particular commenter about Isa was extremely vitriolic and insulting in their reply, which I also saw a lot. It’s amusing, really. If what I was saying was SO outlandish, I doubt it would have caused so many people to get that angry or defensive. This person thought I was being unfair to Isa by saying he didn’t have a good redemption. They were furious that I said Axel had the same basic personality as Lea. “Axel was just as sociopathic as Saïx was.” How could I think Axel had a good redemption, but not Saïx!?

“So, Axel, what were you like when you were human?”

Xion glanced up at Axel, too, eager to see his reaction.

“Me…?” At a loss, he shrugged. “I dunno. Same guy, more or less.”

This is the quote I was referring to when I said Lea and Axel have the same basic personality. After this exchange, Roxas wondered what he was like before he became a Nobody, and I noticed how it showed the sky in the background—the sky for Sora, that is. I really appreciated how Days was full of small details like this. They’re subtle but they tell you a lot.

Obviously I know that Axel is a lot different from Lea. One is an innocent and cheerful teenage boy who spent his time eating ice cream and playing with frisbees. And the other is a jaded and nihilistic assassin who spent his time collecting hearts and plotting to overthrow Xemnas.

Day 118: You Changed, Not Me

Talking to Roxas and Xion always brings back memories of my human life, back when I was a kid. It’s a weird sensation. I ought to be able to share all this with Saïx, but I just don’t feel like it anymore. It’s strange, but I’m content with just missing what’s gone. I’m not the one who changed. You did.

But deep down, Axel still thought of himself as more or less the same guy. He didn’t feel the same way about Saïx, though.

Day 356: Unforeseen Events

What were you really after, Lea? We joined the Organization at the same time, and formulated our plan. At this point, it’s just an idle fantasy. Everything changed. You, and me.

And Saïx actually agrees with Axel, at least on that matter. Unlike Axel, he doesn’t think he’s more or less the same guy he used to be.

“That’s enough.” Saïx turned his head, giving Axel a sidelong look over his shoulder. “Traitor.”

Axel scowled darkly.

“I’m going. You know, don’t you, that you won’t stop me except by force? And even if you tried, you would fail.” Saïx went on his way. Memories informed him that he hated this kind of thing.

After all, it doesn’t say that Saïx remembers hating conflict, the way it does when Axel remembers the past. It says that his memories “informed him” that he hated conflict. As if he’s learning this fact about himself for the first time through his memories.

This commenter also said that I couldn’t take the novels into account because they “aren’t canon”. Even though they introduced canon concepts before the games did. The KH2 novel references Nobodies having hearts, for instance. The novels were carefully written to be completely consistent with canon. Besides, the author was one of the main scenario writers for Days. I’m pretty sure she had a perfect grasp of what Saïx’s character was all about.

A smile played at the corners of Axel’s mouth. “The three of us, we’re inseparable. You’re my best friends.”

Roxas felt a grin come to his face. “Yeah… I guess we are.”

“Hee-hee.” It was Xion, awake—still lying down but laughing. “Thanks, Axel. You’re so sweet.”

Axel sheepishly scratched the back of his head.

Axel has experienced severe trauma, and certainly has changed a great deal. But the difference is how they act when they are exposed to characters who have hearts: Roxas and Xion. Unlike Saïx, Axel is completely open to befriending them. He enjoys how pure and innocent they are. The more Axel hangs out with them, the more he starts acting the same way he did as a human. He starts reconnecting with his old self again—his true self. Xion calls him “sweet”.

Xion had expected as much. Saïx never answered her questions.

Then Xigbar poked his face between them. “There you go again, Saïx. Why’re you so mean to our Poppet?”

Saïx pointedly ignored him.

Xigbar always talks to me, at least, thought Xion.

He’s so much nicer than Saïx. I like him.

This made me laugh. Xion actually complained about how much nicer Xigbar is compared to Saïx, who is completely cold to her at all times. He never tries to connect with her, and always dehumanizes her. In fact, it’s constantly implied that he doesn’t even have the capacity to see the humanity in her.

Axel: “Friends need to lean on each other every now and then. Ain’t that right, Roxas?”

Xion: “We’re friends… Axel…does that mean you and I are friends, too?”

Axel: “Well, if you’re friends with Roxas, then yeah, of course you’re my friend.”

Xion: “Thank you… Roxas, Axel!”

Axel: “Just eat your ice cream.”

Axel was the one Roxas and Xion always leaned on for emotional support. And they always came to him when they had a problem, or were looking for answers about the human heart.

Saïx: “Look at you, Roxas. Up in arms over a nobody.”

Roxas: “We’re all Nobodies!”

Saïx: “Settle down. Xion’s failings won’t affect your standing with us. You’ve nothing to worry about.”

Roxas: “Won’t affect my– What is WRONG with you? Look, I’ll do my mission–later.”

But the story clearly wanted to demonstrate that there was something seriously wrong with Saïx. He is inhumanly cold, more than any other Nobody.

Day 119: Hearts and Emotion

Watching that foolish beast flail about only deepens my disdain for humans and their incessant need to be pinned down by feelings. We became Nobodies precisely to avoid the shackles of emotion. It was only later that we realized the scale of that loss: that some things simply cannot be done without a heart. Nonetheless, I see nary a pleasant thing about it.

Xaldin gave up his heart willingly, due to his disdain for emotions. He later realized that he needed a heart do do certain things, which are never specified. But he’s very unhappy about it. He doesn’t want to deal with love and emotions. His general attitude towards love is the same as when he was a human.

Roxas: “Nah, it’s just… This is gonna sound stupid. Do you know what love is?”

Axel: “‘Scuse me?”

Roxas: “I found out about love on today’s mission–that it’s something powerful.”

Axel: “That’s true. It is. But I’ll never get to experience it.”

Unlike Xaldin, Axel always had a desire for love, even as a Nobody. That’s why he wanted to complete Kingdom Hearts so badly. He wanted his heart back. He hated his condition and called himself “broken”. He wanted to experience love. Before they were Nobodies, Dilan was a cold and uncaring person, while Lea was a warm and caring person. Even without hearts, they are very different people.

All of it disgusted him. Saïx looked up at the skyscrapers, tracking Axel’s presence. He wanted a heart more than anything. But what could he do to get one? Here he was, yearning for a heart so badly, while Axel had managed to gain one without doing anything at all.

Saïx wants the exact same thing as Axel, though. Unlike Xaldin, he desperately yearns for a heart, more than anything. He hates his condition just as much as Axel does.

Day 276: Behind the Truth

Saïx would laugh at people with no hearts calling one another friends, but that doesn’t make it not so.

Yet Saïx in particular is singled out as being quick to scoff at the idea of friendship and love. They never talk this way about any of the other Organization members. Not even Xemnas. Both Lea and Isa were comparable characters in BBS. They were nothing like Dilan.

Day 352: What I Must Do

I love Roxas and Axel. I’m sure Saïx would scoff at that. Call it a trick of my artificial memories. But the time I spent on that clock tower was real.

They were both innocent, kind-hearted boys. When exposed to characters who had hearts, you would expect them to have a similar degree of openness, allowing them to nurture new hearts. But they don’t. At all.

Roxas: “You had me worried.”

Axel: “Worried? Well, that’s a neat trick, considering you haven’t got a heart to feel with.”

Roxas: “W-wait here. I’ll go buy us some ice cream!”

For the entirety of Days, Roxas and Xion’s friendship with Axel runs parallel to his and Saïx’s, showing how they are polar opposites. Roxas was worried about Axel. Afterwards, they talk and eat ice cream as they watch the sunset. Axel tells Roxas he hasn’t reported in yet because he’s still sorting out his feelings.

Saïx: “Why didn’t you report in?”

Axel: “Oh, good to see you, too. You’re welcome, thanks for the kind words.”

The next day is ~Day 72 Change~. Axel could tell that Saïx wasn’t worried about him like Roxas was. He viewed him as a tool, instead of as a friend.

He took a deep breath and said, “Because we’re friends.”

Why was it so blisteringly awkward to say that out loud? Still, words only meant something if you gave them voice.

And he couldn’t come up with a better answer anyway.

“Friends…?”

“Yeah. Friends. People who eat ice cream together or laugh at stupid stuff that doesn’t make sense… Like those kids we just saw.”

When Axel hangs out with Roxas, he shows him what friends do together.

“It’s cold…..” Isa mumbled, nibbling at the ice cream.“Whaddya mean, it’s ice cream so of course it is, got it memorized?”“…..moreover, it’s salty.”“But sweet!”As Lea went on, Isa smiled just a bit. It’s rare to see Isa smile. But, well, friendship means eating ice cream together, talking about stupid things, and laughing like this.

And it’s so important because he used to do the exact same things with Isa. At one point, his relationship with Isa was just like his relationship with Roxas and Xion.

“Most kids spend the time just messing around with their friends. They put off the homework until the end and then help one another finish it.”

He was apparently speaking from personal experience. Was Axel referring to his own memories of summer vacation as a human?

Axel was speaking from experience about summer vacation. It’s fair to assume he also spent his summer vacations with Isa. I can definitely see Lea acting like Hayner and putting off his homework until the last minute. And Isa would have been more like Olette, helping him finish it.

Day 224: Xion

Even if neither of us should exist, that doesn’t invalidate the bonds we form. Next break we get, I told her we’d all go to the beach. I hope we get the chance. Our little summer vacation. I know if we can get together and laugh about stupid stuff, this nagging doubt will go away.

This is why the beach ending of KH3 was so important. Everyone wanted to go. Even Hayner, Pence, and Olette never got to go to the beach during that same summer vacation. I am sure that beach ending was planned all the way back with 358/2 Days. Isa being there was significant. If Axel was speaking from personal experience, I’m sure Lea and Isa also went to the beach together as kids.

Saïx: “Hmph. What took you?”

Axel: “It’s my vacation. I can take all the time I want. Since when do I have to check in with you?”

Saïx: “You’re letting yourself get too attached to them.”

Axel: “Yes, sir, whatever you say.”

Saïx: “You’ve changed.”

But summer vacation means nothing to Saïx. When Axel finally tells Roxas and Xion they are his best friends and inseparable, it is immediately after he tells Saïx to shut his mouth. Their relationships run parallel even in KH2. Roxas had no memories of Axel. But after they fought, Roxas felt a connection with him again. Because of their connection, Axel kidnaps Kairi just to see him again. Saïx, on the other hand, has all of Isa’s memories of Lea, but he spends the whole game trying to hunt Axel down to kill him. Their relationships are always polar opposites.

Axel: “Well, I think you can be inseparable even if you’re apart.”

Roxas: “Really?”

Axel: “Sure, if you feel really close to each other. If you’re best friends.”

Roxas: “What’s it like having a best friend, Axel?”

Axel: “Couldn’t tell ya. I don’t have one.”

The main recurring theme of Axel and Saïx’s relationship in Days was that Axel really missed the past. The old Isa was a person very similar to Roxas and Xion.

Axel: “But you know, we’ll still have each other…even if things change and we can’t do this anymore.”

That’s exactly what spurred this whole conversation on to begin with. Things have changed between him and his former best friend. Lea and Isa used to be inseparable. But Saïx doesn’t care about Axel at all.

Axel: “As long as we remember each other, we’ll never be apart. Got it memorized?”

Axel thought that as long as he still had memories of the old Isa, they’d never have to be apart. Or at least, that’s the only comfort he can really give himself at this point. He didn’t know how else to cope with his loss.

Day 150: Too Precious to Lose

Axel and I talked for a while about the things we can’t bear to lose. Axel thinks that for Nobodies, it’s our pasts, because that’s all we have to remember the pain of losing something.

Despite how awful Saïx is, Axel considered his memories of the past too precious to lose. He didn’t want to forget the pain of losing something.

“ ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

—Alfred Lord Tennyson

Being a rather philosophical person, I think this is how he viewed his relationship with Isa. And this is why I think Axel had a satisfying redemption. He remembered what having a heart was like.

Lea: “I want everybody I meet to remember me. Inside people’s memories, I can live forever.”

All he wanted was the ability to experience love again. And through his own pure intentions and openness to love, he grew a new heart. He sacrificed himself trying to do good, and was rewarded with a glorious rebirth. He was the exact same person he always was, deep down. He just needed some help remembering his true nature.

That was all he wanted to say to me?

But just as Saïx started walking away, he caught a barely audible murmur—

“You’ve changed.”

He listened to Saïx’s receding footsteps, and his gaze dropped to his own feet.

“You sure I’m the one who changed?” he said under his breath.

The entire point of Axel and Saïx’s relationship is that Isa has changed. When Saïx interrogates Axel about the Chamber of Waking, it even zooms in on the moon, just like it did when Xemnas was giving his speech about conquering the heart. It’s similar to how the backdrop of the sky is shown when Roxas wonders who he used to be. This happens on ~Day 117 Secrets~. There’s a subtle message being sent: Saïx is exactly like Xemnas. But the reason is still a secret—and that secret is connected to Xemans’ speech and the Chamber of Waking.

If Saïx was saying that, he probably meant it. Axel stared at the stubborn set of his shoulders.

Both of them had changed.

“Wonder which one of us is more different now,” Axel said under his breath.

Just for an instant, he saw a twitch in Saïx’s shoulders. But he wasn’t about to hold his breath for more. Axel showed himself out.

Axel has changed, too. And now he’s changing yet again, to be more like how he was as a human. His progression is natural and gradual, though.

Oh, I am. And I’m sick of it. I’m even desperate enough to ask you if there’s another way.

The words nearly escaped him, but Saïx was already walking toward the Grey Area. The set of his shoulders told him plainly what the answer would be.

Axel realized how great the rift was between how he remembered their past and what he saw now.

It’s really not comparable to how much Saïx has changed. He is simply not the same person that Isa was. There is no continuity of personality there. They are NOTHING alike.

Saïx: “True, we don’t have hearts. But we remember what it was like. That’s what makes us special.”

Goofy: “Whaddaya mean?”

Saïx: “We know very well how to injure a heart.”

Like Axel, Saïx also remembers what having a heart was like, at least intellectually. Because of this, he knows how to injure a heart.

Saïx: “We have to set things right. There is simply too much on the line…Lea.”

And he is very good at it. Like when he used Axel’s true name. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew how important the past was to Axel, and he tried to exploit it for everything it was worth.

Saïx: “Is she that important to you?”

Sora: “Yeah. More than anything.”

Saïx: “Show me how important.”

After Axel began to grow a heart, Saïx would have had the perfect opportunity to grow one again, too. They were best friends and Axel clearly wanted nothing more than to emotionally connect with him again. But Saïx never reciprocates. All he does is use Axel’s newfound feelings against him.

This is a big reason why Saïx’s sudden epiphany in KH3 made no sense. There was something very unique about his condition that was never disclosed. It’s never explained why he was so cold to everyone, especially Axel. He was like that for a long time, too. Long before Roxas and Xion ever joined the Organization. So jealousy does not explain his drastic personality change in the slightest.

Saïx: “I passed on the message as you so desired. I told the young Sora to keep defeating the Heartless.”

Xemnas: “Good. Not only have you the power to inflict pain, you also have the power to plant seeds of doubt in one’s receptive heart.”

Xemnas even commended Saïx on his ability to plant seeds of doubt in a receptive heart. Wasn’t there someone else who had that ability?

Ventus has loved Terra like a real brother ever since he let him keep his old wooden Keyblade. It seems we have found a loose thread at which we can tug to unravel Ventus’s heart. The first step is to get Terra alone; then we need to plant the seeds of doubt in Ventus. Let him carry his faint light as he chases his brother into the darkness.

Oh, yeah! Master Xehanort was also really good at that…When he learned how much Ventus loved Terra, he exploited that fact to plant seeds of doubt in his heart.

Bottom line: Isa changed into Xehanort. This is why I do NOT think Saïx/Isa had a satisfying redemption. The story never acknowledged that he was Xehanort the entire time, nor did they take any measures to restore Isa. Axel was definitely not as sociopathic as Saïx was. Not even close. But Isa deserved to be associated with his Nobody’s actions far less than Axel. Isa’s situation was more like Terra’s situation. The difference is the story went to great lengths to differentiate Terra from Xehanort/Xemnas. Terra's old personality made a triumphant return and he had a heartfelt reunion with his friends.

Isa was not afforded the same consideration. I responded to the angry commenter that the STORY was unfair to Isa, not me. I’m not bashing him. I simply thought he deserved much better. I said it was unfair that he had to atone for what Saïx did to Roxas and Xion in the first place. In KH3D, Master Xehanort returns and he is able to transfer his consciousness into any of his vessels on a whim. It should have been impossible for Saïx to have a change of heart regarding way he treated Axel, Roxas, and Xion. The Seekers of Darkness are fully Xehanort at this point. I asked why Saïx even had enough agency to atone, since the whole point of a vessel is that they aren’t supposed to have free will. That’s the entire meaning behind the Recusant’s Sigil. And…they never replied.

#kh #kh meta #kh theories #anti-kh3 #kh saix #kh axel #kh xemnas #kh xehanort #kh lea #kh isa #kingdom hearts meta

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hcpefulmarshmallow · 5 years

Text

I’ve been thinking about how so much of the way Komaeda presents himself seems so reactionary, in light of what he’s been through, which can make AUs hard because even a small change can make him feel like a different character altogether, thus rendering said AU pointless and stressful for a stickler like myself. You know, a normal Monday. So I decided it’d be fun to go over a few AUs I’m fond of, and just see if I can reconcile this other Komaeda with the canon dumpster fire we all know and adore. This post is mostly for my own reference, and I may add to or alter it in the future, but hey, if any of my mutuals see something you like, feel free to hit me up.

His Parents Live AU

As we’re aware, Nagito’s luck makes it’s mark very early on in his life. First, the death of his dog, and then the deaths of his parents at the hands of a meteor, which also caused the plane they were on to presumably crash and kill everyone else on board, see here, here and here.

From that moment, he has pretty much no one to help him learn or grow or understand his emotions, or pretty much anyone who didn’t treat him like a nuisance in general. And to be honest, I’m not entirely sold that his mother and father did the best job with him that they could, but hey. They were his parents. Still, this is the assumption I will be labouring under for the purposes of this post.

Their deaths lead Nagito to grow up as someone who is independent, but never really learned how to other people very well. He only takes direction when he feels like it, and he acts as if he’ll never have to answer to anybody, doing always what he thinks is right, and to hell with the rest of it.

So what if we put them back in the picture? How does Ko’s present self change?

I foresee a person who is less inspired by the idea of hope overcoming despair, and more tired of it, or at least tired of his own belief in it. He’s seen this cycle so much by now, but has been shamed for it at every turn.

Although he’s much better at getting along with people (albeit slower to try), he still struggles to make friends. Partly because his luck makes him nervous they’ll somehow get hurt, and partly because he just can’t relate to them, nor them to him. Therefore, he has only his parents’ approval to strive for, which he knows he’ll never achieve. Whether they mean to or not, by now, his parents have distanced themselves from the son who has inadvertently attracted to much trouble - and he feels like it’s all his fault.

He swears he’s okay with this, knowing that keeping his distance will allow them to better live their lives uninhibited by his curse. However, he still wants their attention and love, and in a misguided and contradictory attempt to get it, will engage in more risky behaviour, but then hide that from them so as to not be an even bigger disappointment. Partly, though, this is also an expression of his self-loathing, and firm belief that, though he’d like to be a stepping stone to hope, it’s not something he can aspire to.

He comes across as charming and friendly, but won’t make an effort to befriend anyone, actually preferring to keep to himself. During the rare times he does go on one of his Rants(TM), he’s far more vitriolic. He won’t reference his own luck unless he must, and somehow hates himself more than his canon counterpart. He’s quicker to bitterness and secrecy, refusing to tell his parents a thing even after his terminal diagnosis. He also keeps his sexuality from them for a very long time, for all these same reasons.

Otherwise, he’s very much the same person. Still adores his talented Ultimates, still quick to love them, to die for them; still desperate to be one of them.

Various Talent AUs

These are fun because they can change based off the talent. One sweeping alteration across the board, is that he’s more arrogant, and looks down even further on the untalented. That said, he still doesn’t put himself up as high as the others, and that’s because deep-rooted psychological issues transcend ideology, especially in someone as deeply damaged as our boy. Here are some of my favourite examples:

Detective!Komaeda

I’m of two minds about this one. I like the idea that he doesn’t consider himself that great a detective, much like Shuichi. Therefore, he feels undeserving of his title. Or perhaps he can recognise his skill, but views it supplementary to the others: something he must use for their benefit. Rather than catching criminals, he’d rather solve his classmates’ issues behind their backs so they can focus on being the best they can be, without petty distractions in the way.

In this timeline, he would take on a calmer, more Sherlock-esque demeanour. Since he’s an Ultimate Detective, he wouldn’t need to try to get peoples’ attention; they would give it to him, trusting his words as true deductions. But this is not a privilidge he abuses, using it only when he has something of value to say, and keeping quiet the rest of the time. He does feel the pressure of that trust though, leading him to isolate himself in direct rebellion with his desire to make friends.

His ability to believe in others is tested frequently, as he’s often brought in on the more brutal cases as he seems to be able to stomach them so much better (as even Hajime observes in canon how unperturbed he looks towards the beginning of the game). But these cases take a heavy toll on his psyche, especially the ones that hit close to home.

Mystery Novelist!Komaeda

Nagito doesn’t consider his books especially great literature. He started writing as he kept running all his local libraries and bookstores out of new stories, and since he found mysteries comforting, decided to make his own. He never intended to publish, but one of his manuscripts was sent in without his knowledge by one of his favourite librarians, and his stories became overnight sensations.

His greatest criticism is that the people in his stories don’t always act like people: but otherwise, he is praised for how deeply he can make readers feel what his characters feel. What his adoring public don’t know, is that he’s based a lot of that off of things he’s seen and experienced, venting his own depression and post-traumatic stress into his work. As a result, he never re-reads his own writing once it’s completed. He is also critically acclaimed for the complexity and intelligence behind the mysteries he creates, fooling even some of the greatest minds who read his work up until the very last page. And even then, they’re left with a sense that the answer could’ve never been anything else.

It’s this reputation that gets him invited to Hope’s Peak, although since Nagito doesn’t think his books are that great, and because this ‘talent’ comes from a deep pain he feels hopeless to resolve, he thinks of his talent illegitimate. He doesn’t bring it up unless made to, and refuses to be interviewed.

No Tragedy AU

Ah, the dream. The kids get to go to school, enjoy their school lives, graduate and live happily ever after. What would become of our boy in the big, bad adult world? Actually, this is a favourite of mine, but do permit me a little creative licencing here. For the sake of a better answer than “he ded”, we’re going to assume Nagito either never gets ill, is cured of his illness, or his condition is indefinitely stable.

I think that, after graduation from Hope’s Peak, Nagito will never wander far from his beloved school. The position of talent scout will be offered to him due to his innate ability to sense hope and despair and talent, and he will adore his job. He even comes up with innovative ways for the school to improve, citing his own experience as a student, and the mistakes he saw made.

If and when he’s ready to settle down with someone and start a family, he will take paternity leave to be with his child, but will always return to the school. After his first/only, however, he does not come back as a scout, but rather, takes a teaching post, allowing him to, instead of just finding future Ultimates, help shape them into the best that they can be. (And also, because the hours are more structured and require less overtime, so he can be with his family more.)

For Nagito, there is no higher cause a lowly nothing like him can dedicate himself to, than to see that hope is nurtured through the generations. He’s matured a lot by now, but he’s still a pretty...bizarre teacher, to put it nicely, often going off on lesson-long tangents about how “each of your talents is uniquely beautiful, and you should treasure them and use them to bring about hope!” Typical Nagito stuff. But he does truly care about his students, and is fair and treats them well. He works hard to earn each and every one’s respect over the years. Most of his former students will write to him at some point, citing him as one of the reasons they learned to believe in themselves and in their skills. It’s not a job he ever wants to retire from.

#( i had to end it happy #you're welcome )#ʀᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ ᴄᴀʀᴅ [headcanon]

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moonlight-at-dawn · 5 years

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Any recommendations for your followers things outside your main passions on Tumblr? (FFXV and Full Metal Panic!)

MOST OF MY RECS ARE SO OLD I CAN’T MAKE GRAPHICS FOR THEM AHHHHH

BUT HERE!!!

Video Games

Mana Khemia ~Alchemists of Al-Revis~

PS2/PSP

Robust NG+, Multiple Endings, Character Affection

Part of the Atelier series of games and my personal favorite of the lot

Cry with me over Cat Dad Sulphur

Atelier veterans can be amazed over PLAYABLE!!! PAMELA!!!! (and her SKILLS!!! SHE’S OP!!! AS!!! FUCK!!!)

Infinite Undiscovery

XBox360

Writers are Shouji Gatoh (Full Metal Panic!) and Ryo Mizuno (Record of Lodoss War)

NG+, an amazing postgame dungeon that can make you cry if you’re as attached to a certain character as I am

Canon romance is realized before the end, so you get to experience some of it in more than just a ~happily ever after~ way :3

Fantastic cast, lore, cutscenes, an interesting battle system that I personally love and can be challenging at times, especially during the obligatory “separated from the party” section of gameplay

I can’t count how many times it made me cry okay

Lunar Silver Star (Story/Harmony)

multiple systems, best bet today would be PSP -Harmony version

A fucking CLASSIC, every JRPG fan should experience it AT LEAST ONCE

Okay I’ve sadly never watched in Japanese but TOMOKAZU SEKI’S FIRST(?OR DAMN NEAR?) ROLE WAS AS KYLE OKAY, I LOVE HIM, HE’S MY FAV SEIYUU

Disclaimer: Some of the humor… has not…. aged well… I realize. There’s some slightly predatory-gay/predatory-trans tropes in, but not every character views those random NPCs that way at least??? Jessica doesn’t seem to mind the trans priestess at least?

Look, I’m one of those people that tends to love the mascot characters that everyone else calls annoying, and I WILL DEFEND NALL WITH MY LIFE, YOU WILL RESPECT HIM, GIVE HIM FISH, AND THANK HIM WHEN HE RESURRECTS YOU GODDAMMIT XD

(And hug Nall in Lunar 2, Ruby isn’t as useful as he was, but she’s cool too)

Maybe I’m a baby but again, I cry, multiple times lol

LOVE STORY OF THE CENTURY, ALEX AND LUNA ARE GREAT AHHHHHH

Atelier Series in general

I recommend Mana Khemia first and foremost, but most of the Atelier games have their own charms :3

They all tend to have some angst, yes, but are ultimately feel-good and 💖~

Not as scary as all the time limits for jobs might seem. The time is very generous as long as you aren’t screwing around until the last minute lmao so it is great for casual gaming~

AUTHORS/BOOKS (I have a fantasy bias lol)

Tamora Pierce

I started reading her books something like 20 years ago, and I still enjoy them to this day

I bias towards Tortall books, but the Circle of Magic is also amazing (and one of the main 4 from it is a lesbian POC blacksmith~)

My favorite set is the Beka Cooper trilogy. These ones were also a bit experimental in style, in that they’re written as diary entries aND SO!!!!!! GOOD!!! It PAID OFF BIG TIME, I WAS BLOWN AWAY

Mercedes Lackey

I’ve only indulged in her Valdemar/Velgarth novels so I can’t speak on her other series’ bUT

I seem to have a thing for when authors break out of their comfort zone lol because my favorite of these are the Mage Storms trilogy. This one is very broad, focusing not just on Valdemar, but the main character is actually a Karsite (the historical enemy of Valdemar), and the Empire also plays a big role and just, ahhhhhh, I love seeing more than just Valdemar and the Hawkbrothers and Shin’a’in ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Magic’s Price ;;o;;

Brandon Sanderson

I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of his books lol

His Cosmere books all interlink so when you read outside of wherever in it you started, it’s really cool to see all the similarities and the few worldhopping characters that make appearances in multiple worlds

HIS WORLD BUILDING IS FUCKING IMPECCABLE OH MY GOD I COULD JUST STUDY HIS WORLD BUILDING TECHNIQUES FOR MONTHS IN FACT I HAVE BEEN

Really amazing and diverse cast of characters, social aspects of the ‘verse is almost never divorced from the characters, their experiences, and their story. It’s really amazing to see it all~

Magic systems involve clear rules for manipulation of existing forces. Things don’t happen just because ~magic~

Stormlight Archive is where I’ve started and I’d also highly recommend it just because I cannot stop loving this cast and revisiting it over and over and over I’ve listened to the audiobooks like 4 times and they’re all between, what, 38~52 hours long?

Even when you might not like a character at first, revisiting their story is just… HNNNNN NEWFOUND LOVE AND APPRECIATION

ELHOKAR, I’M TALKING MOSTLY ABOUT ELHOKAR

One of the spren in this world, the Cryptics, represent “the fundamental mathematics by which natural phenomena can be explained” tO GIVE AN IDEA OF HOW ROOTED IN REALITY THIS STUFF IS LOL SANDERSON GOES HARD HE DOESN’T FUCK AROUND WHEN HE BUILDS HIS WORLDS

Uhm…. That’s mostly it for my recommendations I think lol, I don’t really watch much in the way of TV….. (I’d recommend NCIS seasons 3-11 though - Ziva David is my reason for life but her leaving made it hard for me to continue and then the writers broke their fucking promise not to do her dirty while she wasn’t around and while it made for a beautiful story for DiNozzo’s departure, THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO DO THAT)

and when it comes to my taste in anime, it’s fairly easy for me to find stuff to reblog lol… so…

WELL NO, HERE

SWORD ART ONLINE

YEAH I SAID IT

It’s “cool” to hate on it but it’s not nearly so bad as people make it out to be. People just like to spread vitriol about it because it’s popular, and you know how popular shit gets treated like the fucking devil around here. Asuna’s not some damsel in distress not even when she’s a prisoner in the ALO arc, she’s always got her own agency and is always working towards her goals and freedom and victory

And wtf is this nonsense people like to say about Kirito cheating on her?????? HE DOESN’T. HE LOVES AND RESPECTS HER AND HE DOESN’T FLIRT WITH OTHER GIRLS YOU GUYS JUST DON’T HAVE A SENSE OF FUCKING HUMOR APPARENTLY CAUSE YOU THINK JOKING = FLIRTING

Anyways, great romance, I love the iconic line from BEFORE they got together when he says the whole thing about “Wouldn’t [learning something new about the one I love] mean that I get to love them even more now?” like HE’S SUCH A FUCKING CUTIE

*coughs* Don’t let the hate that spreads around about this (or anything else really) deter you from checking it. Wipe your minds of what you hear and let it stand on its own, decide for yourself how feel. Don’t go “Oh I hear they reduce Asuna to a crybaby in s2″ and then see it that way because it’s what you expect to see. This is a THING, by the way, if you get told something is great or bad for whatever reason, you’re a lot more likely to see it that way. So just, keep that in mind, and try to empty yourself of preconceived notions before looking at it, k? K. That’s my last recommendation for this post lol cause I’ve rambled on forever.

Let things stand for themselves, not on the backs of hearsay.

#misha rambles #long post

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is-the-rose-on-your-coffin-door · 6 years

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JULIAN ALBERT IS DRACO MALFOY CONFIRMED: The conspiracy no one wanted but everyone is getting

Disclaimer: IRONY AND GENERAL SARCASTICNESS INTENDED

Introduction:

Draco Malfoy, one of the supporting characters in the Harry Potter series, has an intriguing backstory, arc, and character motivations- however, remained greatly unexplored in the novels themselves. Any reading into the actions of the character had to be done exclusively by the fans, as the accounts were given by a main character fixated on hatred toward him, which may have limited the depth the author could have given him. However, the real character development may have been there all along, in the form a completely justified and entirely irrefutable integration of Draco into the Arrowverse.

Anyone who has the third season of CW’s The Flash should have picked up on the clear similarities between the new addition, Julian Albert Desmond, and the character of Draco Malfoy. Not only are the two characters played by the same actor, Tom Felton, but they also bear identical personalities. Draco’s animosity towards Muggle borns is mirrored by Julian’s disdain for metahumans, with both characters believing a class of people to be lesser than they are due to circumstances outside of their control, due to differences intrinsic in their very biology and yet irrelevant to the quality of their character. As harmless initial “antagonists” that merely serve to annoy the main characters by flaunting their superiority complexes and generally being jerks, Draco and Julian represent the unjustified, workaday vitriol pitted against the main characters. Julian maintains the same characteristics that got Draco sorted into Slytherin, only acquiescing to Barry’s plea to lie to the police after Barry agrees to resign from his job- an act that betrays his prioritization of his own desires over the common good. He doesn’t hesitate in lying about his blackouts to avoid incriminating himself.

The list goes on and on.

However, this isn’t the point. Sure, Julian and Draco are similar, but why must they be the same person? The answer is simple. They are, guilelessly, too similar. No significant differences between them exist that cannot be explained. The timing even works out perfectly, with Tom Felton having aged between the final Harry Potter movie and the filming of The Flash, yet still not being as old as he was in the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II. This means that Draco had plenty of time for the events of The Flash to occur before starting a family in England. He is 17 when he graduates Hogwarts. If you do the math, the Deathly Hallows epilogue occurs when Draco is 37 years old. Julian reveals that he was 20 when he found the Philosopher's Stone and got his position at the CCPD 3 years later, making him 23 years old. Since Draco’s son, Scorpius, was 11 during the epilogue, that means that Scorpius was conceived when his father was 26. Despite the extensive Harry Potter canon, the year of Draco’s marriage to Astoria Greengrass is unknown, meaning it definitely could have happened in the three years between his appearance in the Arrowverse and his decision to have a child. We know that Draco and Astoria didn’t deliberate having children until they were already married, meaning there is no room for “accidental conception” headcannons, unlike with Harry Potter himself. The timeline here indisputably checks out, so here is the real story of Draco Malfoy, former terrorist operative and possessed meat puppet.

Timeline Synopsis and Defense:

We start with the first major discrepancy between the two accepted timelines, Julian’s sister, Emma Desmond. “But wait,” you say. “Draco didn’t have a sister! He was an only child, which was an important part of his backstory as it fostered his parental coddling. Whereas Julian’s sister was the main drive for his original character motivations, with his grief over her death being the starting point for his ties to Savitar-”

Let me stop you right there. First of all, what a pleasantly well articulated argument. However, you’re forgetting one thing. Flashpoint. The focus of the overarching Season 3 plot, Barry Allen creating an alternate, irreversible timeline? You probably think I’m going to say that Flashpoint created Emma. But no. That’s too easy. I’m using Flashpoint as an example of how Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy created Emma.

The literary abomination that is The Cursed Child, a script that was confirmed by J. K Rowling to be canon despite its innumerable and mind bogglingly abysmal errors, contained a convoluted plotline involving going back in time to prevent someone from preventing something in an attempt to fix the rippling mistake caused by the first prevention. This frustrating writing decision mirrors the kickoff point of the plot in S03E01 of The Flash. This structure is identical but for one thing- in The Flash, a third timeline is created, but in The Cursed Child, the original timeline is restored. However, both stories followed the exact same preventative processes. What gives? Different interpretations and portrayals of the meaning and function of time? Of course not. The true answer is that a third reality was created in The Cursed Child, and this is on top of the third reality created by Barry Allen in which they all lived. However, Flashpoint is the original timeline by the time The Cursed Child takes place, so it’s irrelevant. The point is, it is established that a time traveler cannot remember their new autobiographical history when arriving in a new reality, and must rely on empirical observation to discern discrepancies. That means that when Draco arrived back in the original timeline, he could not remember the changes to his life story, and assumed that it was the same. Scorpius wouldn’t remember either, seeing as he was also a traveler. This tells us that the Draco Malfoy of The Cursed Child has no memory of being a member of Team Flash, and therefore no memory of Emma.

During the events of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Draco found out what was being hidden in the roped off area of the school along with the rest of Hogwarts- information learned upon the fatal altercation between Harry Potter and Professor Quirrell. It was in his nature to be intrigued by the concept of the Elixir of Life, and he would have imagined what he could do with the Stone’s power, even at the age of 11. He had exposure to the idea from a very young age. So, Draco had the means and the inclination to follow up on that desire one day. When his sister died, he experienced alluring hallucinations incurred by Savitar, exactly as he revealed in The Flash. These hallucinations were similar to those caused by the magical Resurrection Stone, likely a property held in some form by the Philosopher’s Stone due to its connection with the defiance of life and death. With a series of complex tracking spells, he was able to find the location in India where Dumbledore had had it hidden all those years ago, financing the expedition easily with his family’s money and apparating to the location with a few witches and wizards.

“Oh, come on,” you groan. “That doesn’t make any sense. The Stone is probably Untrackable, and Dumbledore didn’t hide it, he destroyed it, you incredibly inept-”

SHUSH. I’m getting to that part.

Draco has a history of subverting magical limitations, he managed to fix the set of “unfixable” Vanishing Cabinets, a task thought to be impossible, especially for such a young boy with no external resources. He probably should have died in the process, or at least gotten stuck in limbo, like Montague- but he didn’t. In addition, Draco had the aid of Savitar himself, who yearned desperately for a rescuer. As for Dumbledore, he has lied to Harry before. Several times by omission and outright. When Dumbledore refused to tell Harry things, it was always about his concern for his wellbeing. He lied to Harry for years about his true purpose in the future war, not only to spare Harry the pain, but himself. It would be completely in character for Dumbledore to tell Harry that the Stone that had caused them both so much trouble and pain was gone for good. He would want Harry to have peace of mind about the jarring situation. In addition, it is made clear by Dumbledore’s initial reverence for the Resurrection Stone that he greatly values magical objects of such immense power, and sees their destruction as harmful. I’ve already gone over the thematic similarities between the Resurrection Stone and the Philosopher's Stone, and it stands to reason that he would react similarly to being in possession of both. Dumbledore merely hid the Stone instead, not wanting the sacrifice the potential good it had, unaware of its future ties.That said, he allowed Nicholas Flamel to accept his mortality at last and move on, swearing to the man that no one would use it again.

Upon Draco finding the Stone, Savitar was free at last. He had found his puppet. He murdered the other members of the party before Draco could blink, knocking the man out, taking the Stone, and escaping. Nicholas Flamel had chosen not to reveal certain attributes of the Philosopher's Stone back when he had researched it, there was no use making it more coveted than it already was. The offensive uses of the Stone were antithetical to everything that he stood for, and he realized that everyone was better off not understanding it’s true potential. Savitar, however, understood it. He used it to periodically control Draco to exact his own deeds, the same way Voldemort’s Horcrux controlled Ginny in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

The Muggle police in India were extremely suspicious of him, which terrified Malfoy as he had no knowledge of how the Muggle justice system worked. Not wanting to return to England and face his parents, he went to America instead, assuming the name Julian Albert Desmond. As a result of waking up injured and bloody from blackouts on occasion, he picked up Muggle medicinal practices as a way of treating such abrasions in public, as sometimes he was forced to do. He eventually became so intrigued by the concept of treating wounds without magic that he researched them much further. He told Team Flash that his rudimentary medical skills were from being an army field medic, but it was just a cover for the real reason. When relating elements of his past to others, he would make the due edits to fit to his fake identity. He wasn’t sure how long he would remain in America before he felt the desire to return, so he indulged in some of the delightfully juvenile teachings of Muggle higher education, learning of forensics himself and faking a degree with magic. The subject was one he chose randomly without knowing what it meant. Afterwards, though, he decided to actually pursue employment in the field, at least until he got sick of it and ran back home.

When the results of the particle accelerator explosion, the metahumans, began to show themselves, all he could think of was what would happen to the witches and wizards that were bestowed scientific magnifiers to their already explosive power. He was always on the lookout for such an abomination, yet never found one. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or terrified.

However, everything worked out in the end. With the death of Savitar, he was free of the Dr. Alchemy persona. Eventually he just gave up on reviving Caitlin and returned to England feeling like a more complete person, about one to three years after the events of S03E23. Unfortunately, this series of events remains unknown to Draco as of now, due to the memory issues incurred by the Time Turner and lack of clues hinting as to the divergent timeline. Upon returning, Draco still married Astoria and sired Scorpius, making the short term effects of this timeline upon discovery almost nonexistent.

As you can see, Julian Albert is merely Draco Malfoy in disguise and any other interpretation is eternally flawed. What insipid tale would that of Draco Malfoy be without The Flash to complete it? Perhaps this sordid story is not quite so mellifluous, but a pragmatic approach must be taken to far reaching conclusions such as this. The overlap between the characters should be tacit in its revealing implications. WAKE THE FUCK UP PEOPLE.

#seriously where else was i supposed to post this #also im sorry #the cursed child #the flash #fictional conspiracy #Draco Malfoy #Julian Albert #SERIOUSLY I JUST WANTED TO MOCK FICTIONAL TIME TRAVEL OKAY

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lostinthemargins · 7 years

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Some real talk about Sciles/Stydia/Sterek and the shitshow that is Teen Wolf

Thoughts on Teen Wolf (Scott/Stiles brotp/Stydia/Sterek) after reading a lot of vitriolic and just plain sad TW posts, from ALL ship bases and fans:

For one, I never hated Scott nor wished he’d die or anything, even though I don’t particularly “like” him. That’s because of how’s he’s been written. My issue with him is NOT that he’s imperfect (because he is), in fact, that’s one of the things I LOVE about Scott. He can (and always has been able to) be an utter asshole, and that makes him normal. No one is all good or all bad. Unfortunately, showrunners typically think that way. And partially because of that (I believe), Scott is written as this happy go lucky, gullible, perky puppy dog who loves everyone and has a messiah complex. But that’s not true. He is not the best friend in the whole wide world, although that doesn’t necessarily make him a “bad” friend. He can be both a bad and good friend because he can be both a bad person and a good person. He is not infallible or perfect, as we would be led to believe. Watching all of the seasons over again really cleared my head on this and reminded me why I had begun to build up some animosity toward the character, which surprised me. I began to get really fed up with him and liked it when Stiles and he butted heads because I thought Scott was acting like a total idiot and, yes, a shitty friend. The answer was simply that he’d always had the capacity to be that way, even back in season 1. He was the stereotypical dorky teenage boy who got lucky with a pretty girl and began to think he was hot shit, certainly better than his friend because he was succeeding at having what he called a “normal life.” He didn’t really “need” Stiles at that point, and he just used Derek over and over. It happens to the best of us. To be fair, Stiles was written to type as well as the dorky best friend who’s pining over the girl he can’t have. The difference for me is that Stiles has had Scott’s back more often then visa versa.

So for me, my agitation with Scott stems partially from the writers inability to allow Scott to own up and make some real changes. Think about this, in the final 6a scene, it’s Stiles who’s directing the “I need you” “I miss you” conversation. Scott doesn’t have a lot of self-reflection or heartfelt epiphanies as much as you think he would. His mostly deal with his status as an alpha and the responsibilities that that entails.

Another part of it, again not really the character’s fault, is how his status as a POC is used. I think it’s great that he’s a POC, but I also feel that the showrunners use that as a cop out. It almost lets them feel entitled to shit on other POC characters because they can still point to Scott and say “Look, our main character’s a POC, we’re so modern.” Honestly, Scott could totally be white and it wouldn’t affect his story, that’s how little a role his heritage plays, so the fact that he’s a POC to me just seems like Jeff Davis and company patting themselves on the back for being inclusive. I mean, let’s be honest, his acting ability in season 1 was embarrassing, so I’m a little cynical as to why they chose him. The shitty way they’ve written his character just rubs salt into the wound.

On Stydia:

First, to be fair, I’ll throw it out there that I’m not a Stydia shipper, but that’s not because I don’t like them together or because I ship Stalia or because I thought something crazy like he was secretly with Derek in canon (although I do ship Sterek). I’ll touch on Malia, but I honestly ship Scalia, so there.

I love them in a close friendship (kind of like the one he was establishing with Derek before it all went to hell). I thought it would be SO MUCH more meaningful and have much more of an impact if they remained friends. Why? Because it would have been playing AGAINST TYPE, something TW showrunners can’t seem to grasp. So Stiles was the stereotypical dorky best friend who pined and borderline stalked the hot girl and eventually “won” her affections. Is it a cute love story? Sure. Does it make me want to stab my eyeballs out with how cliché it is? Absofuckinglutely. Do I think it reduces both of their characters to the single purpose of satisfying an artificial and set in stone “ship”? YES. I say artificial because they’re fulfilling the roles that have been laid out for them since EPISODE 1. What is exciting, cute, sweet, or even remotely celebratory about that? And so all close male/female friendships have to end in them dating? Come on people, we’ve been fed trope after trope after trope, starting with the teenagers falling in love at first sight aka Scallison. Not hating on Scallison by any means, just how they got pushed together like wham bam thank you ma'am; although, yes, teenagers do fall in love easily so I can at least understand it even if I don’t like it. Allison falling in love with Isaac and him learning to trust her, someone who had tried to kill him, after everything he went through? Now that was something special. It was sad that it never had the chance to go anywhere.

I’ll never get over how they really just slammed Stydia in everyone’s faces with 6a. What was it really about other than to force Lydia into accepting her feelings? …Nothing. Literally nothing happened that changed anything from premiere to finale. Except for Mama McCall and Papa Argent getting their smooch on. Which I’m down for. I didn’t buy into her and the Sheriff, partially because it would have been so obvious and I think a little too campy and saccharine. So 6a just accomplished the “full circle” plotline of Stydia, in all its romantically forced and melodramatic glory. Again, I like them together, and I think her devestation felt real and it was sweet. But they really just slammed the romance aspect together like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. With STALE peanut butter and jelly. As in Lydia didn’t really give an inkling of romantic feelings beyond a few shared glances throughout the seasons and both she and Stiles were busy with other people. A Stiles and Erica relationship was baited right before the actress left, and then we were baited with Cora, who Stiles seemed interested in, and then of course we had the underage Stalia sex in the basement of a mental institution AKA one of the few black marks on an otherwise good season. And then he drops her and what, we’re supposed to pretend like they weren’t a thing for 2 whole seasons? O.K. Once again, we have another character introduced to serve very few purposes with no real plot herself, and that’s mostly to be a girlfriend to Stiles and Peter’s reason for self-improvement. What other purpose has she served? But yeah, we’re supposed to forget her because Stydia is a thing that must happen and it’s the last season. Jeff Davis pretty much said about a lot of season 6 plot lines and decisions, “It’s the last season, so we thought ‘Why not? Let’s do it.’” That is so unbelievably shitty and unfair to characters and their actors. Like, have some self-respect. THAT is why a lot of fans think Stydia is fanservice. Because of the showrunners attitude that they’ll just throw it all against the wall, give “everyone” the happy ending they always wanted because Teen Wolf is ending. Davis said he always wrote every season as if it was the last before they knew it would end with 6. HELLO. Stiles and Lydia don’t get together until 6a. That means if the show had been cancelled like Davis suspected it might, Stydia wouldn’t have been endgame after all.

As for Sterek, it’s my otp but not because I think they were romantic on the show. They weren’t that we know of. I just like them as a pairing, always have, and always will. Some of you spout that’s it’s gross because of the age difference, so obviously that means you’re not OK with all of the baiting they did with Lydia and Parrish? And you have a problem watching underage characters having sex on screen and constantly seeing minors being sexualized? Right? You have to if you think Sterek fans are disgusting. So I don’t put too much thought into the like 6 or 7 year age difference because when Stiles is 18 Derek would only be maybe 25. Hell, I’m 23 and I can tell you a few years means shit, especially this particular period of your life. Derek is still pretty much a kid. Not that I’m going to get into the age difference debate and the sexualization of Sterek. I don’t write, nor do I read fanfiction featuring a sexual canon Sterek relationship; if I do at all, it’s in AUs.

I do think there was more Sterek content in 3b and 4, despite them being apart, but what troubles me is how they pretty much did it on purpose to upset Sterek fans. Dylan and Tyler loved working together, they said as much, and they commented on not having as many scenes together. Meanwhile you have certain people making derogatory public comments and putting the ship and it’s fans down. Of course the fan base is going to be hurt by that, why wouldn’t they if they feel like they’ve been disrespected by the very people their viewership supports? And then they watch their two beloved characters have less and less screen time together and it feels very deliberate. Obviously Jeff Davis and company felt the need to send a message that Sterek was not going to happen, which is fine, but they did so at the expense of a very funny and interesting relationship–something that has hurt the show, no matter how much you dislike or disagree with Sterek as a “ship.” Stiles and Derek could have been real friends, something they were working toward; anyone remember Stiles being the one to show up in Derek’s semi-lucid dream state when Kate shot him? Some point out that could mean Stiles is an anchor-like figure for Derek, or that at the least he is someone Derek feels comfortable around to imagine him there at a time when he is hurt and needing reassurance and advice. And that emphasis on Stiles when Derek left in 4 and the touchy subject of his absence in 5a? Yeah, Stiles had begun to like Derek, and the show did a fair amount of queer baiting–not just for Sterek but a lot of other pairings. But that relationship was severed mostly because A. the showrunners were determined to make any ship other than Sterek exist B. they separated them a lot from seasons 1 and 2 to reduce the Sterek support and C. Tyler eventually decided to leave for his own personal reasons (the show wasn’t kind to his character for sure). After that we saw the slow decline of Stalia and the continued crawl of Stydia scenes, meanwhile having the brand new ship of Larrish being dropped on us out of the freaking blue.

The showrunners didn’t really want to commit to going all in with Stydia before the absolute last season. That’s gotta mean something to Stydia shippers. I don’t understand how you guys can gloss over that and ignore how it affects the integrity of the characters. Would I rather see Stydia than Stalia? Yes and no, but only because I acknowledge that Stalia was a crack pairing to begin with and it made no sense storyline wise. Stydia still feels rushed in 6a after a slow burn that could have just meant a strong friendship. And now we have these revelations such as Lydia admitting that everything changed when she first kissed Stiles. O.K. then, now why don’t we get an explanation as to why that’s just now a thing for her when the kiss took place back in freaking 3a, in a scene that was unrealistic to begin with? I understand the excitement of seeing your otp come true, but the lack of romance until the crazy plot of 6a harms the integrity of everything.

They should have made Stydia a thing before 6a instead of saying “What the hell, why not?” Believe it or not, Sterek shippers might actually be pissed if they’d done that to Stiles and Derek. Can you imagine? Having Derek come swooping in at the last season and have Stiles suddenly realize his romantic feelings for him? The fan base would be in an UPROAR for the lack of development and rightly so. Is Stydia more believable? Of course. Has Derek been absent since 5? Obviously. So they had no chance to develop any relationship at all, friendship or otherwise. Stydia makes more sense because they’ve had more time to become friends and have been pushed together, in part as a response to Sterek as an insistence that Stiles and Lydia would always be important to each other and would definitely get together. Meanwhile, characters like Malia are getting used like a rag doll, taking up space as Stiles girlfriend when it’s convenient, and tossed back aside to make way for Lydia once Davis and company feel good and damned ready to make Stydia a thing.

At the end of the day, the biggest reason I don’t want Stydia to be a thing is because their relationship matters more when they’re not doing the thing you expect. It’s much more mature for Stiles to say, “You know what? I always had this childish notion that we’d be together because it was fate, but I realize now that we’re too good of friends for this to be the right decision. I value your friendship more than the desire to fulfill my immature ambition of winning you.” The romantic subplot that never came to fruition between Rachel Green and Joey from Friends come to mind. They realized it didn’t feel right because they were too close, their friendship too strong. They made an adult decision not to pursue it further.

But no. We don’t get that kind of growth. We get the same old regurgitated same old, and that’s why I won’t really miss TW when it’s gone because let’s face it, the real show’s been gone for a while now.

Jeff Davis and company kind of gave up a long time ago for various reasons, but unfortunately by then the oldest fans, making up the loyal fan base, were hooked and still came back for more torture. The fact that we’re less than a month out, have only just been told that, and still don’t have a trailer, makes me livid in ways I can’t describe. MTV/TW showrunners have really shown their disdain for their own characters and their fans for the sake of going out with a bang, and it’s utterly disgusting.

Rant over.

#teen wolf #sciles #stydia #sterek #fandom #otp #teen wolf fans are the best and the worst #stiles stilinski #lydia martin #derek hale #scott mccall #stalia #malia tate #malia hale #ships #shipping #ship wars #mtv

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lunaswondrousworld · 7 years

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Salty fandom questions

Thanks to @darknesshadows @darknessp @malikaesthetics for sending in questions. I’m answering all of them together and putting my answers behind a cut because this turned into a bit of an essay. Because SOMEONE ( *cough* @dnteverdoubtme *cough*) said I should just answer them all (seriously, if I wake up tomorrow with no followers left I will blame this entirely on you). Also, well, salt. Quite a bit of salt.

Anyone following me for longer than 4 weeks shouldn’t be surprised by any of these answers (even though I’ve probably never spelled things out so explicitly), however for those of you who are new around here… beware some highly unpopular, possibly PROBLEMATIC™ opinions. Consider this your only warning and proceed at your own risk (or, you now, just don’t ;- ).

(I’ve done my best to ensure that this doesn’t end up anywhere near any tags, if it does anyway it’s not intentional)

All answers apply to Sh@dowhunters.

Disclaimer: when I talk about “The XY fandom”, this is obviously a generalisation. I know it doesn’t apply to everyone. Some of my mutuals are part of the xy fandom, and all of them are lovely people. /end disclaimer

What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get? While I personally don’t ship any of the canon ships, I do get why people ship them. If we’re talking all the ships in this fandom that anyone could possibly ship, I’d have to say ClaIec. Or Alec/any girls really. Make no mistake, I’m not saying this due to moral or ethical concerns – personally I don’t give a flying fuck what people ship, even if its VaIentine x a Vetis demon, whatever floats your boat – but I just really, fundamentally do not get it. I mean that boy is as gay as they come, take that away and you’ve got an entirely different character. Beats me really.

Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP? All the canon ships, current and future ones.

Have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion? More than once. I usually live by “don’t like don’t read”, and I scroll past / blacklist a lot. But there’s a handful of things where my stance is 100% A and if yours is B or C, that’s not something I can ignore. In this fandom, it’s mostly when people post / reblog certain nasty anti opinions/posts.

Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP? *looks at the camera like I’m on The Office* (for those of you reading this who seriously DON’T know, just continue to the next answer)

Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you? (this one was sent in by ALL but one person, I would like to point out. So either you truly don’t know or you’re just here for the wank.*g*) Okay you might want to sit down and grab a bite cause this might take a while. You see (and that’s the part that usually surprises people) I actually started out as a pretty hardcore MaIec shipper in this fandom. Yep, me. Shocking, I know. I sort of migrated from the Teen Wolf fandom and everyone I followed back then was gushing about MaIec, I saw the first gifs on Tumblr (the show was already more than halfway through S1 when I started watching) and I thought hey, they’re cute, and actually canon, whee! So I pretty much fast-forward binged to 1x12 - through a pair of heavily MaIec-tinted glasses. My ideal version of the show back then, I’m ashamed to admit, probably would have been 90% MaIec, 9% Izzy and a little bit of Lydia on top (which was pretty much what a large majority of my dash was on about), I was totally ready to ditch everyone else for a short while. But thankfully, it wasn’t long before my brain remembered that I was capable of independent thinking, and I did a re-watch, and noticed that not everything was as picture perfect as it was made out to be, and I also actually noticed (and started falling for) the OTHER characters and possible pairings, most prominently Jace and JaIec (and honestly it will never cease to baffle me how anyone with a functioning pair of eyes will be able to look at S1 and NOT see that potential. Well, except for the MaIec-tinted glasses, probably). For a very short while, still blissfully oblivious to the nastier parts of this fandom, I happily multi-shipped (which was a first for me, I really am a ONE OTP kind of girl) both JaIec and MaIec pretty much equally, MaIec as far as canon was concerned (despite its many flaws - which where blatantly obvious once I cared to LOOK - but chose to ignore for the sake of happy shipping) and JaIec as a “God look at all that potential, in a different reality where xy had gone differently they totally would have been endgame” sort of way. And then that E!Online Shipping poll happened (the 2016 one where MaIec lost to CIexa) and that’s when got a first inkling of the truly ugly, rabid side of this fandom (back then I shipped both MaIec and CIexa so that’s probably what gave me a bit of a neutral observer’s perspective on these poll shenanigans, cause personally I didn’t care which of the two ships won since I loved them both). Around that time I had also started talking to a couple of JaIec shippers - who were lovely (looking at you fam) and refreshingly NORMAL compared to what I’d started to see in that other corner. Anyhow, from then on I was slowly distancing myself from the MaIec fandom as a whole. I still liked the ship in the sense that I enjoyed watching it in canon, even though, in terms of actual OTP, I quickly gravitated more and more towards JaIec (as I said I am a ONE OTP kind of girl so it was bound to happen). Long story short, during the long hiatus between s1 and 2a, (MaIec) fandom got exponentially nastier until, at some point – I’m still not sure when exactly - it just TIPPED (cause it definitely wasn’t like that back when S1 was airing, not to that extent) – and it suddenly started being “okay” to just outright attack and hate on everyone who dared ship either one of the pairing with someone else. With a level of vitriol and nastiness I have seldom seen (and I’ve actively been in fandoms since BtVS first aired, which was in the late ‘90s). Coupled with such a level of impertinent entitlement where everything has to be about or relate to MaIec, else there’s outrage across the entire fandom. And that, my friends, eventually managed to put me off the pairing for good. To the point where, if I’m entirely, brutally honest, I’d actually prefer to not see any Alec scenes at all to having to watch MaIec scenes, because this godawful fandom will find a way to ruin it one way or the other. If only by constantly whining about how it still wasn’t enough or “how dare that other character breathe while my OTP was about to suck face this is an OUTRAGE!!!”

Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated? I can’t think of one, no. I might end up hating something I started out liking (see above), but I don’t think it ever happened the other way around. What sometimes does happen is that maybe there's something I don't actually care about all that much and then fandom will start hating on it and in the end I'll like the thing out of pure spite. But if I actually hate something, that'll stay that way.

Is there anything you used to like but can’t stand now? See #5.

Have you received anon hate? What about? Nope, because I don’t have anon on.

Most disliked character(s)? Why? I don’t actually actively dislike any of the current main characters. I did Simon in S1 but I’ve learned to tolerate his existence (that’s as far as I’m willing to go here). If we expand this a bit to “characters I’m least interested in” I’d have to go with Luke and Simon. I’m just not interested in either of their personal arcs unless they are somehow relevant to my faves’. Also I’m not to keen on Maia or any of the other new characters they’re adding (unless they’re somehow relevant to my faves) for the sole reason that they will take up screen time I’d rather spend on characters I’m actually interested in. I did dislike Jocelyn, but, yeah.

Most disliked arc? Why? My knee-jerk reaction would be to say MaIec (bitter? Me? Naah!) but that’s only part of the truth. Actually it’s more “all the romantic arcs for the sake of romance while not contributing anything else to the greater plot or to individual character development”. Cause MaIec as a general development was an important part of Alec’s character arc in S1, and that whole “the girl who you’re falling in love with is actually your sister” an important factor for Jace’s, so I can appreciate them for that. But beyond that, I’m just not interested in any of the romance plots. At best, they bore me to tears (I’m not actually joking when I say that I signed up for a show where pretty people wearing leather jackets and fingerless leather gloves kill demons and are awesome together, not “the warIock and his shadowhunter and their epic romance”. I’m more of a “The Walking Dead” / “Supernatural” girl than “Friends” or “Gilmore Girls”, you know?). At worst, they make characters I actually like do increasingly stupid things to the point where I’m left wondering if they’re actually the same character I originally fell for.

Is there an unpopular character you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why? VaIentine & Sebastian. I usually tend to like villains, and while VaIentine really often leans towards “ridiculous comic book villain”, I just love AIan Van Sprang and what he does with the little that the show gives him. And Sebastian (judging from what we know from the books) is just so deliciously fucked-up badwrongevilPROBLEMATIC™ that he’s inspired the keepers of this fandom’s moral purity to write up entire manifests why Thou Shalt Not Like Him Under Any Circumstances Cause He’s Bad Wrong And Evil™ back before it was even certain that he would be in 2B in the first place. So obviously I’m going to stan the shit out of him. Also, WiIl Tudor’s cute and British and I’m really looking forward to him and Dom having scenes together. :-)

Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why? As for what has already happened, I didn’t actually mind Izzy’s Yin Fen plot. I wouldn’t say it was my favourite, but I certainly didn’t hate it as much as the rest of the fandom. I don’t have a particularly sophisticated reason for it though. As for what’s most likely / possibly to come, I hope the show will follow the book plot for Sebastian as closely as possible. (I don’t want to say too much for people who don’t know anything about it and don’t want to be spoiled.) Why? Because I like darkbadwrongnasty shit. Give me “darkbadrwongnasty shit where awful things and horrible people happen to good people” over romance any time. (Also, it would most likely piss large parts of this fandom off, that would be an added bonus.)

Unpopular opinion about XXX character? He’s not as flawless as you all like to believe. That’s okay though, flaws are what make characters interesting.

Unpopular opinion about your fandom? It’s the worst fandom ever? IDK is than an unpopular opinion? Probably, since around 80% ARE the worst people, and they would disagree with me so...

Unpopular opinion about the show? The writing really is rather subpar compared to some of the other shows I watch.

If you could change anything in the show, what would you change? Age it up (have the characters be some of the actor’s actual ages, i.e. around their late twenties), move it to a network like HBO or Starz, and make it push the limits of an R-Rating. Also, put the main focus on the Sh@dowhunters, Sh@dowhunters politics, just all things Sh@dowhunters. Centered around the Lightwoods (including Jace). (And did you notice how none of what I would change would actually include “make JaIec canon”? Cause contrary to what large parts of this fandom seem to think, this is not all I / we think about. Wow what a shocker.)

Instead of XYZ happening, I would have made ABC happen… Well take a look at my shipping and plot preferences and then you can probably guess my answer.

Does not shipping something ‘popular’ mean you’re in denial and/or biased? I don’t know, does it? If you ask the majority of this fandom, it really means I’m all sorts of –ist and just generally a horrible person. Or something. Do I get bonus points when I act like I care?

What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom? Pretending to do everything for a higher, nobler purpose (shipping for representation and the likes), refusing to accept that not everyone else will or has to adhere to your own standards of what’s right or wrong or PROBLEMATIC(TM), and taking everything that happens on the show too damn seriously. Refusing to grasp that this is primarily a fantasy tv show with a main purpose to entertain its audience, and to earn the network money, not to make the world a better place.

What is the purest ship in the fandom? CIizzy and CIimon, probably. But honestly, nothing in this fandom is even remotely pure.

What are your thoughts on crack ships? Whatever makes you happy, I don’t judge.

Popular character you hate? Nope.

Unpopular character you love? see #11

Would you recommend XXX to a friend? Why or why not? As a piece of trashy popcorn entertainment to pass the time, yes. To someone who actually asks for a rec for quality television, no. Cause it just isn’t quality television. (And yes I know it’s a fantasy show geared towards teenagers, but so was BtVS, and that one still managed consistent writing and character development, over 7 seasons. But anyways.)

How would you end XXX/Would you change the ending of XXX? With the Lightwoods / Alec running the NY institute. The very last scene would end like the very first one began: Jace, Alec and Izzy together, just the three of them.

Most shippable character? For me personally? Jace. Generally (though I personally don’t actively ship them with anyone except low-key with each other), I think Izzy and Clary are pretty shippable as well. Simon too.

Least shippable character? Luke? But just because he doesn’t really interest me so I personally wouldn’t know who to ship him with. Except VaIentine (past times, and probably present time also), but I’m sure that’s all sorts of badwrongproblematic. Ah well.

#Luna replying to stuff #*#*text #me rambling away #well I asked for it didn't I #I only have myself to blame #*g*#meme

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renaroo · 7 years

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Twisted Legacy (15/25)

Disclaimer: Transformers and related properties belong to Hasbro Warnings: Canon-typical language and violence, Psychological torture and horror, Post-war politics, Canon divergence/Loose canon, Hospitalization and illness, Cultist indoctrination Rating: T Synopsis: [Canon Divergence from MTMTE and exRID #54] The legacy of the Primes has had a tainted past, one that weighs heavily on Optimus, his supporters, and those who seek the legacy for the future. But as they look forward for themselves and for Cybertron, a darkness looms that threatens to further corrupt the unsteady peace of their planet with its curious claim to be the Hand of Primus himself.

It’s up to Optimus, Windblade, Rodimus, and their teams to try and save all Cybertronians from this mysterious threat and, perhaps, change the future for the better if they can.

A/N: I could try to give all the excuses for why it took so long to write this chapter and get it out for you guys, but ultimately I just have to say that I’ve had a really, really unreasonably tough month that has taken away from my time to write this story quite a bit. But, hopefully, the length of the chapter can somewhat atone for the sin of having left it for so long. Thank you all fo being so patient with me, it means a lot.

Special thanks to @secretlystephaniebrown, Isame, Snozzlefrog, and Squiggol for the feedback! I really appreciate it!

Part III: The Risk of Saving the Guilty Chapter 3.5: In the Public’s Best Interest

"You honestly just don’t know when to give up, do you?” Chromia asked in irritation. “Did you miss the part where you were thrown in jail for a few hours without due cause because of this maniac and how he runs this Primus forsaken planet?”

Windblade of course didn’t have to be reminded of such things. She had just watched her fellow delegates nearly give her a sentence for the very same injustice.

“I didn’t,” she answered Chromia instead, pushing on forward through the halls of the very capital that had been her prison just beforehand. “And persistence will never be a bad quality.”

“Too much of any quality can be a bad thing,” Chromia muttered, though it wasn’t lost on Windblade.

She knew she was pressing her luck. She had known that before she ever fully accepted her position at Cybertron for the Mistress of Flame and Caminus. Perhaps he had gone at these things with a certain naivety and self-righteousness. Maybe she had been knocked off her feet more than once by Cybertron and its ever incredulous leader.

But Windblade at least could not clall herself naive anymore.

“Things are only ever going to change around here if mechs like us refuse to allow the utter nonsense that is Starscream’s governing,” Windblade declared, finally leading them directly into the innermost chamber of Metroplex’s body and to the secreted away brain module.

“There is no way that Starscream won’t figre out where you’ve gone to if we’re here,” Chromia continued to object. “They’ll be on us in minutes.”

“I only need a few,” Windblade assured her, walking toward the console before the brain module. “Util then, I’d appreciate if you could watch the door.”

“Don’t I always?” Chromia sighed, producing her battleaxe and taking charge of the door.

Windblade smiled apologetically toward her friend before stepping up to Metroplex’s brain. “Hello, Metroplex. I’m sorry I haven’t been by recently.”

Wind-voice. he greeted her as usual. There was a note of hesitation before he continued. You are... upset.

Offering the Titan a gentle smile, Windblade reached toward the brain module and began to pull for the direct connection. “Frazzled more than upset,” she admitted. “But I’m hoping you can help.”

Help. I will. For Wind-voice.

“Please, Metroplex,” she said, connecting the line directly from his brain module to the side of her own helm, “let me see through your eyes. Help me search for someone who wishes to cause us all harm.”

The Titan seemed alarmed, if not exhausted, by the request. There was an understanding of the underlying danger and nervousness of his citizens that Metroplex had been aware of, but beyond that the specifics had eluded him until their linking.

Stop them, Wind-voice.

Windblade nodded. “I absolutely will, Metroplex. You know I will. We just have to find out where they are first of all. Can you help me?”

Immediately, security feeds throughout Metroplex’s system began popping up all around Windblade. There were more than she could reasonably get through herself, but fortunately her connection to Metroplex was giving her the ability to scan through them quickly enough.

It was like searching a Titan for any of the various system errors or pains it might have been feeling, but accelerated.

Metroplex was taking Windblade’s lead and specifically honing in on parties he had no innate connection with -- those who, in a sense, had not belonged to the city. That were foreign to him.

But the more their focus shifted to that concentration, the more feeds began to pop up. Dozens quickly became hundreds and suddenly they were both staring at unfamiliar faces all over the city.

Don’t know them, Wind-voice. Still mine, Wind-voice.

Her own head was throbbing and Windblade reached up to her mantle. “I know, I know,” she said out loud. “This is all wrong--”

Getting Chromia’s attention, the bodygard turned enough from her post at the door to look worriedly at Windblade. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“This, what I’m doing -- the way I’m doing it. It’s wrong,” Windblade explained, looking tiredly at Chromia. “Metroplex has become a hub -- a metropolitan between all of the city-states of Cybertron’s surviving population, of all the colonies. We are looking for those who don’t belong based on Metroplex’s relations to them, his familiarity, and all it’s doing is making everything muggier. None of us belong at the end of the day by that definition.”

“Find another way then,” Chromia replied, seemingly unaware of the problem truly at hand.”

“Chromia, you don’t understand,” Windblade said, exhausted already. “Think about the targets thus far. Think about Error’s actions. He’s out of place in Metroplex, maybe, but they aren’t the actions of an unfamiliar resident,” she said. “It’s not truly a colonist at work. These are the actions of someone familiar. Someone at home.”

Chromia crossed her arms. “You said that Metroplex doesn’t know him.”

"He doesn’t,” Windblade agreed. “I don’t... It doesn’t make sense, I know, but neither does trying to trifle through everyone on the streets and abusing that power when we have no indication that we’re even on the right lead. That’s something Starscream would’ve asked me to do if he wasn’t so sure that I was a part of this mess somehow.”

Chromia turned fully and tilted her helm. “But Starscream didn’t think of this. You did.”

“I know, and that scares me,” Windblade replied. She looked back to the Titan’s brain module before her. “I’m so sorry to have abused your power like that, Metroplex. I won’t do it again,” she promised before unplugging herself from the system.

“You’re not Starscream, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Chromia said without hesitation. “I know that look on your face -- that’s your look of I’ve messed everything up. You haven’t. There hasn’t been anything to mess up yet. So don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it?” Windblade asked critically, looking to her bodyguard and friend. “Chromia, don’t you remember when we spoke with Optimus before? When we talked about Shadowplay and mnemosurgery... how he said that their ethics were debatable? How horrified I was to hear that from not only someone we trusted but from someone who was a Prime?”

While she didn’t look convinced, Chromia apparently knew Windblade well enough to not continue the debate. “What’s the solution then? You need to find Error -- not just to save lives but to prove your innocence in all of this nonsense. How are we supposed to do that without crossing any lines?” She frowned, looking off with some amount of shame in her optics. “You would know better than me. I’ve crossed too many lines before. We both know that.”

Dropping her head, Windblade hugged her arms and tried to think.

Her optics flickered back up to Chromia as she had an epiphany. “Why was Rattrap so convinced that he saw myself and Rodimus -- someone I don’t even really know -- with Error? Convinced enough he went to Starscream and got him to act on it. Like he was genuinely afraid of what he had learned.”

Chromia gave the question a genuine frown. “Is it not enough to just assume that he has a name like Rattrap for a reason? He’s one of Starscream’s cronies plain and simple.”

“No,” Windblade said with an affirmative shake of her head. “It’s not that simple. Rattrap is in this for himself, not for Starscream. And for him to react to myself and Rodimus with the vitriol that he did is significant. It was genuine fear -- he believed that we were somehow involved and endangering the rest of Cybertron.”

“Then he’s a crony and an idiot,” Chromia replied defensively. “Where are you taking this thought train, Windblade?”

“To the next logical conclusion, Chromia,” Windblade answered She turned to Metroplex’s brain module and reached out to it softly once more. “Thank you, Metroplex. And I promise again to not abuse our relationship like that again. I trust you to do everything you deem necessary to protect all Cybertronian life.”

Wind-voice. Thank you.

Relieved, Windblade turned sharply and started back out the doors.

“Where are we going now?” Chromia asked.

“Following that thought!” Windblade answered zestfully before quickening her pace.

As familiar as she was with the capital, it did not take her long to lead them both exactly to the medlab that Ratchet had all but taken over from Knock Out and First Aid in the past few weeks. Chromia, always a speedster herself, didn’t miss a step, always shoulder to shoulder with Windblade the whole way.

Just as they reached the threshold, however, Optimus Prime himself was stepping outside of the room with Knock Out, of all bots, at his side.

“Optimus!” Windblade called out, getting the Prime’s attention as she came to a halt by him. “Is Rodimus in there? I need to speak with him.”

Knock Out released a sarcastic vent and rolled his wrist. “Good luck with that. There’s not much upstairs in that bot right now, if you catch my drift.”

“I do not think that is the best idea at the moment, Windblade,” Optimus said more gently. “At the moment, Ratchet is reconstructing a base frame for Rodimus, and against all of our suggestions, he has refused to be placed offline for the procedure. Rung, the psychiatrist, is sitting with him through the process and I do not believe the session should be interrupted. For anyone’s sake.”

“This is important, Optimus, I promise,” Windblade argued. “I’m trying to track down exactly why Rattrap thought we were agents of this cult.”

“Delegate Windblade, is that the wisest decision for you?” Knock Out asked, crossing his arms. “Given the close shave you nearly had before the Council and the fact that another honored delegate has accused of steep atrocities, I would assume you would do your best to keep your nose out of the investigation from this point on.”

"Sounds like Council meetings haven’t been enough to give you a real idea of who Windblade is,” Chromia half mocked.

Windblade ignored the two of them, instead focusing on the Prime. Optimus still seemed distant in thought -- more so than she had ever seen him before. And his dire attitude had not been improved by whatever business had taken him to the Lost Light and back.

“Optimus,” she said, stepping up to him. “If nothing else, I’d appreciate knowing your perspective on all of this. At the very least, you have more stakes and understanding of the elements and mechs involved than I do. I’d value your opinion more than any right now.”

He focused his optics on her for a moment, but they were not filled with the warmth of the Matrix.

“My opinion should not carry more weight than the others. Especially not now,” Optimus answered instead. “Please do not disturb Ratchet and Rung’s work at the moment, Windblade. I trust you to do whatever you deem right or necessary, but what they are doing right now with Rodimus is vital work. It may save Rodimus’ spark.”

He then continued to walk away, Knock Out reluctantly following behind him for some reason.

Chromia looked after them, helm tilted to the side. “Wonder what that’s about. Any ideas, Windblade-- Windblade? What are you doing?”

Settling on the floor outside the door, Windblade rested her back and wings against the wall. “Waiting until I get the clear to speak with Rodimus. I need answers. He seems to be the only one with anything close to them.”

Staring at her, Chromia shook her head. “You’re one stubborn bot,” the bodyguard sighed before taking a seat on the floor opposite to Windblade.

Sharing a small smile with Chromia, Windblade hugged her knees against her chest. “Thanks. You are, too.”

Ultra Magnus was no longer the Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord, and his status as Second-in-Command was questionable given the general confusion of having Co-Captains. But he took his appointments, former and imagined, with a note of seriousness that would have turned lesser bots’ energon to crystals in their pipes.

And with one such Co-Captain down, Ultra Magnus had never been more affirmed in his duty helping to keep the Lost Light in functioning order.

Megatron sat back in his desk with servos stacked before his eyes. He seemed even more ancient and brittle than the war itself had ever made him seem. And that was after one of the few encounters between him and Optimus Prime that hadn’t come to actual blows.

“Is there anything you need me to do, Captain?” Magnus asked, nearly feeling as tired as Megatron looked.

“Yes,” Megatron answered without hesitation, actually managing to surprise Magnus some. “I need you to get Bainstorm in here. Quickly. Before I rethink anything.”

Confused, Magnus reached to his wrist so as to send out the communication. He waited a moment, looking to his exhausted leader. “Are you certain you wish to meet with Brainstorm? You have not met with him one-on-one.”

“And I will continue with that record, you are staying here, too,” Megatron ordered flatly. “Send it out.”

Allow a twitch of emotion to cross his faceplate, Magnus sent out the signal at last and shook his head firmly. “As you wish, Sir,” he replied flatly.

Considering the very public, very close to success, assassination attempt that Brainstorm had attempted on Megatron on their very ship with time briefcases and nonsense abound, it was not exactly a Luna One level mystery of Cybertron why Megatron had not had much contact with his would-be killer compared to the other survivors of the mutiny.

Which made the certain change suspicious, if nothing else.

There was apparently some hesitation at least on Brainstorm’s end as it took him more than thirteen minutes to get to the Captain’s office whereas Ultra Magnus had calculated multiple times that a bot of his make and model could have easily traversed the space from the science lab to them in at least nine minutes.

Given the circumstances, however, Ultra Magnus neglected to bring up the discrepancy.

“Uh, you asked for me?” Brainstorm asked cautiously, barely poking more than his helm into the room.

“Yes, now get in and shut the door behind you,” Megatron ordered impatiently.

Brainstorm glanced from the captain to Ultra Magnus warily, but there was little encouragement to be offered. Instead he simply did as was ordered and came barely into the office, just enough steps to bring in his wings before the office door shut behind him.

“Alright, guess you’re being serious about... whatever this is,” Brainstorm joked lightly with a turn of his wrist.

“I’m going to be curt with you, Brainstorm,” Megatron explained. “You were one of the least injured among the survivors on Eukaris. And your attempt on my life well before the mutiny is well known for its... elaborate nature and decades of planning.”

“Ooo-kay,” Brainstorm replied, tilting his helm. “Thank you? I guess?”

“Which is why you have raised my suspicions,” Megatron continued.

“What?” Brainstorm balked.

“Please know that any truthful reply to me at this point will not be met with reprimand but with honest consideration,” Megatron explained, red eyes flickering with meaning. “I wish no harm to you now than I did when it was first learned you were going back in time to undo my life and its work.”

“Is that supposed to be comforting?” Brainstorm asked flatly. “That’s just ambiguous enough that I can take it to mean you’ve really wanted to kill me since that day. Just saying. Maybe we should hash everything out before this conversation continues--”

“Sir, perhaps it would be best to allow me to work out some proper lines of questioning here,” Magnus offered. “I believe yours are... dubious at best--”

Megatron held up a hand and silenced them both, much to Magnus’ chagrin.

“We haven’t the time for double meaning, only answers, I assure you,” Megatron explained. “Brainstorm, have you at any time -- recently or in the past -- been approached by this cult which seems to be at the center of undermining our mission to find the Knights of Cybertron and undoing the very fabric of the peace back on Cybertron.”

For a moment, Brainstorm simply cycled his optics in disbelief, then he pointed at his own chest plate with a thunk. “Me?” he asked critically.

Somewhat stunned himself, Ultra Magnus leaned toward Megatron’s desk. “Sir, perhaps there is a better way to parse your question--”

“Perhaps, but there’s not a more direct way,” Megatron said without so much as looking Ultra Magnus’ way. “Brainstorm, I want honesty in your answer. No repercussions will come of the truth. You have my word.”

“Oh, that means a lot!” Brainstorm cried out, throwing up his arms. “Are you being serious right now? You think I would betray the ship? Betray Rodimus after everything? This is my home! And I almost lost it once on the Necrobot’s planet already!”

“Perhaps you were approached beforehand, your values have shifted,” Megatron offered. “Perhaps the group became more militant in your absence. You have played both sides before.”

Brainstorm’s optics narrowed and he yanked off his faceplate viciously, the tearing of metal causing Magnus to flinch. “You see any insignia or flames on this? I don’t even have the Decepticon brand anymore, I removed it the moment I was placed on probation on the ship. Sir.”

Ultra Magnus could feel the air growing stale once more, neither bot on both sides of the room willing to relent.

“Some marks can only be seen at the spark,” Megatron said simply in return.

“What are you fraggin’ getting at!?” Brainstorm demanded.

“Why were you left relatively unscathed? Why didn’t Starscream take the opportunity to arrest you? Why were you the only member of Rodimus’ away team which did not make it into the caves with them before the attack?” Megatron asked in rapid fire succession.

“If you’re trying to say something to me, Megatron, you need to say it directly to my face!” Brainstorm snapped back angrily. “I am not a traitor! I am not! And being accused by you, of all bots, is an indecency I can hardly muster!”

“And yet you know no bot has more reason to suspect,” Megatron replied darkly.

Having heard more than enough, Magnus stepped between the two of them clearly, holding his hands up. “This cannot be continued,” he said plainly. “It is inappropriate and unseemly.”

“You mean he is inappropriate and unseemly!” Brainstorm snarled, snapping his faceplate back onto his helm. “I’m done with this meeting if you are.”

“I have not received my answer yet,” Megatron said calmly.

“Frag you, Megatron,” Brainstorm growled, heading out the door in a brash fashion.

Flinching as the door slammed shut, Ultra Magnus then turned to his captain suspiciously. “Satisfied, Sir? I think given a few drinks at Swerve’s and one story to either Tailgate or Whirl and this entire fiasco will have alienated the entire ship from you.”

Megatron scowled. “Believe it or not, that was not the intention of the meeting,” he announced.

“I’d appreciate being informed as to what was the intention then,” Magnus replied dryly.

“We already turned the recordings over to Optimus Prime,” Megatron reminded him. “That much of the investigation is out of our hands. But we can still act on what we know. And what we know is that Brainstorm was not heard on those recordings.”

“That makes him guilty?” Ultra Magnus asked skeptically.

“That makes him a link, and if he is half the genius he makes himself out to be then he would understand that significance as well,” Megatron answered, denta gritting. “Nothing these menaces have done thus far has been without reason. And no one recognizes that more than myself.”

“I suppose not,” Ultra Magnus replied. “But do you think Brainstorm understands his significance even in that much?”

“Not after that exchange,” Megatron sighed. “That was honest. And Brainstorm does not seem to me to be quite a liar.”

“Only in matters of building time machines,” Ultra Magnus said dully.

“Careful, Magnus,” Megatron said, rubbing at his optics. “Rodimus might not take kindly to you growing a sense of humor while he was gone.”

If nothing else, Optimus could always rely on Starscream’s flare for theatrics.

He was suspicious from the moment he had been summoned by Cybertron’s appointed leader, after all there were few things that he and Megatron agreed on but not trusting Starscream had been high among them. But when he entered the room to a bleak darkness and found that the former Seeker leader was looking for a one-on-one, Optimus felt confidence flare up from his spark.

Starscream was hoping to corner him, but was more afraid of witnesses should he corner himself.

At the very least it meant that Windblade had been right in her suspicions. Though there was a morality question on whether or not to encourage her snooping any further.

There was definitely something Starscream was attempting to hide.

“Took you long enough,” Starscream snapped as soon as the door was closed.

“Apologies for any inconvenience,” Optimus Prime said with as little spark behind his words as possible.

Turning toward Optimus, Starscream shared what was becoming his characteristic, world weary scowl. “I already know it’s next to useless to ask you what you’ve learned from the expedition I sent you on to the Lost Light,” he said flatly. “Seeing as how your first instinct upon reaching Cybertron was to completely undermine my executive authority before the entire council.”

“Then I would say you do not understand my motives very well,” Optimus argued firmly.

“Oh, please,” Starscream sneered, rolling his optics. “Prime, there are few things in this or any other world a Cybertronian has ever stepped foot on that are less understandable than your nobility and motives. I’m certain you can explain away your motivations for assisting and defending a friend who got himself in over his head and found himself in the midsts of a plot to undo the very fabric and stability of our very unstable current society.”

Optimus let out a long vent and shook his head. Starscream had developed very little over his time as leader, even less so than Optimus had once dared to hope that he would.

The mech was incapable of accepting other points of view or reaching out for help in the idea of simple compassion and kindness.

A ruler not to be revered, one could argue very firmly.

“If there is nothing you would ask of me then I would rather make myself more productive and useful elsewhere, Starscream,” Optimus somewhat threatened. “I have much to discuss with the medical staff--”

“Oh, I’m certain you do,” Starscream mocked. “Seems everyone is suddenly very busy around your little second stringer protege.”

A flicker of anger quickly rose within Optimus and he turned to leer at the supposed leader of his planet, his home. But nothing came of it, though the reference to Bumblebee and the condescension toward Rodimus were not outside of Optimus’ grasp.

“A lot can be said about the allegiances we hold and in what order we hold them, Starscream,” Optimus said clearly. “I will not make apologies for where mine have come to lie.”

“Then let me make it abundantly clear, once again, just where mine lie, Optimus Prime,” Starscream snapped back. “Mine are with the good of Cybertron. And I am not above wickedness or betrayal of lesser goals to ensure that. That is what makes me the leader of this new world’s order rather than you. And the more savagery and chaos your presence and the presence of your followers brings to us, the longer my reign will flourish. Because if there’s one thing this world trusts less than me as a ruler, it’s war heroes who are still fighting.”

“That may be true,” Optimus admitted wearily, “but you were far from a bystander yourself, Starscream. And no one knows the scars of war and strategy as well as you. Which is why I know to come to you for this request rather than your council.”

Starscream hesitated, his fingers tapping against the armrest of his chair.

“You have me curious, I must admit,” he said lowly. “Do go on.”

“I believe that it is more and more apparent that this cleansing that Error and his cult have called for has to do with the Matrix and those who have bore it,” Optimus explained carefully. “I have reason to believe that it was the reason for targeting Rodimus psychologically, for targeting me physically, and for targeting you politically.”

For a moment, a flicker of surprise came across Starscream’s face before hardening into anger. “You believe I am targeted. Prime, if you have evidence of a conspiracy against me and you haven’t been forthcoming with it, then I will charge you with being part in that conspiracy--”

“It is apparent,” Optimus clarified. “These threats have done nothing for you politically, and I believe there is reason behind Windblade’s suspicion of you in regards to Error. And I believe that the three of us are connected by one thing.”

“Please, I wore the Matrix momentarily compared to the two of you,” Starscream scoffed. “That putz Hot Rod saw to that himself. Before Megatron put a hole exactly where that Matrix belonged. What an irony that they now serve together thanks to your intervention--”

“The amount of time would not matter to those radicalized enough to believe that a valid response to any perversion of Primus’ will is worth murdering and slaughtering over,” Optimus warned. “So if there are not any connections as Windblade suspects there are, I believe it would be within your best interest to keep it that way.”

Starscream narrowed his optics. “You have a plan, I presume?”

“I will use myself and the Matrix to draw out Error, somewhere away from the city’s population and away from the energon supplies to prevent any threats of spreading the disease they have weaponized,” Optimus proposed grimly. “In return, all that I ask is that there be more guards for the medical ward and for yourself.”

“For your fanboy and your enemy,” Starscream surmised. “How kind of you, Optimus.”

“I simply do not wish for Cybertron to fall into chaos without a decisive leader,” he clarified, He could only hope that his tone hid any disgust he still felt at his core from having to regard Starscream as such.

“I can grant it,” Starscream announced. “But you won’t be going alone on this suicide mission.”

“But--” Optimus began only for Starscream’s hand to come up.

“I’m sending another member of the Council to, at the very least, bare witness to this catastrophic idea of yours. You and I may not think much of the Matrix and those who have touched it, but you are correct about the sway it holds for others. In the unfortunate circumstances that you should fall, I would rather have someone I trust nearby to take the mantle for you rather than this genocidal maniac Error,” Starscream clarified.

“In that case, I will go with whoever you assign,” Optimus said regretfully.

“And while you are gone, I will do my best to uncover whatever evidence it is that you have been so keen on keeping from me that you found on the Lost Light,” Starscream warned, a clever smirk on his face. “So don’t think we’re done with these elating conversations just yet, Optimus Prime.”

“Neither of us should be so lucky,” Optimus responded grimly.

#writing #tf fic #TF: Twisted Legacy #Windblade #Ultra Magnus #Optimus Prime #Chromia #Metroplex #Knock Out #Megatron #Brainstorm #Starscream

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MARI RUTI IS a Distinguished Professor of Critical Theory and Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of Toronto. Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings: The Emotional Costs of Everyday Life is the first of two books she will publish in 2018. It’s her 11th overall, and the fifth since 2015 — which means that in the past three years alone, she has written about queer theory (in the Lambda Literary Award–nominated The Ethics of Opting Out), evolutionary psychology (The Age of Scientific Sexism), the Hollywood rom-com (Feminist Film Theory and Pretty Woman), all of which engage the Lacanian psychoanalysis at the core of her entire oeuvre.

Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings is both consistent with that canon and stands apart. It shares with Ruti’s other work the disarming lucidity that characterizes her writing and teaching, and her insistence that critical theory ought to directly address the contours of lived experience. But whereas her previous work has often centered on mapping out the intellectual connections between heavyweight theorists such as Jacques Lacan, Emmanuel Levinas, Judith Butler, and Slavoj Žižek, Penis Envy combines philosophical and autobiographical explorations. It’s not so much theory being applied to the real world, but rather — in a similar vein to “autotheoretical” texts like Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts — holding ideas and life alongside each other, searching out what she refers to as “the art of living.”

Penis Envy opens with Ruti’s memorable first encounter with the Freudian concept. Reading Freud when she was in college, Ruti found herself in such visceral disagreement with the idea of penis envy that she flung the book across the room and declared the foundational psychoanalyst “a fucking idiot.” Revisiting the concept now, she concedes that it’s worth rethinking penis envy in ways that reinterpret it as a precursor to feminist politics and culturally produced “bad feelings.” Ruti’s intellectually generous approach is one of “thinking out loud,” drawing candidly on her autobiography — her difficult childhood in Finland; the strain of being a woman in academia; her urgent relationship to writing — and weaving these episodes together with her theoretical reflections. Ruti invites the reader into a conversation about our common vulnerabilities, with the idea that naming them might go some way toward making them easier to bear.

Penis Envy, then, represents something of a turning point in Ruti’s career. Speaking with Ruti over email, our conversation centered on how this intellectual shift informed her writing process: the questions she feels compelled to revisit, the psychic risks and rewards of creativity, what it’s like to write “autotheory,” and the question of how best to actually sit down and write.

TAJJA ISEN AND PHILIP SAYERS: In the introduction, you frame Penis Envy as a way of revisiting the questions — self-fashioning, singularity, creativity, desire — that have been central to your earlier work. At this point, how would you distill the question of what preoccupies you? How has the approach you’ve taken in this book changed the way you think about these questions?

MARI RUTI: It seems to me that life, generally speaking, is a matter of repeatedly returning to what doesn’t quite feel “done.” That’s why the repetition compulsion — repeating hurtful patterns of behavior that aren’t conducive to our flourishing — was an important concept for Freud. He understood that what most fascinates humans, at least on the unconscious level, are their failures. Buried in this compulsion to return to the site of failure is the wish to make things right, to ensure that this time, we won’t make the same stupid mistake. But of course we usually do.

For me, writing has been a generative way of coping with this tendency to repeat. I discuss bad feelings, traumatization, and other painful experiences on the written page in the hope that this keeps me from repeating them in life. I’m not saying I’m always successful. But understanding that writing is always an unresolved process — that I’ll never be able to exhaust a topic — has helped me come to terms with the fact that the same is true of life, that there are no definitive solutions or easy fixes.

What has always most interested me is what one might loosely call “the art of living”: living the kind of life that feels meaningful. The themes you mention — self-fashioning, singularity, creativity, and desire — are all subsets of this theme. It continues to be my main preoccupation. In Penis Envy, I describe a scene where, in 2016, I was standing in front of a mirror in a Harvard bathroom and realized that nothing about the bathroom had changed since I finished graduate school in 2000. It was I who had changed. It was a moment of recognizing that more than half of my life is over. So now what? How am I going to live the rest of it in ways that feel alive? The personal approach that I took in writing this book has made this question all the more urgent.

Your writing in the past has sometimes used examples from your personal experience to illustrate the real-life relevance of theoretical concepts, but in this book, it’s not just that there’s more of the autobiographical element — it often feels like the “bits of memoir,” as you put it, are themselves generating the book’s argument. One way to think about this approach — and you talk about this — would be to call it “autotheory,” after writers like Paul Preciado and Maggie Nelson. But there’s also a longer history of writers doing similar things: for example, you’ve taught Maggie Nelson and Chris Kraus alongside Nietzsche, Roland Barthes, and Walter Benjamin. Thinkers like Frantz Fanon, Audre Lorde, and even Freud could also be on that list. How would you locate your own work in relation to that tradition?

With this text, I explicitly set out to write an autotheoretical treatise. All the authors you mention have been foundational to my intellectual formation, and what I’ve always admired about them is their dexterity in weaving the personal into their theoretical or philosophical reflections. Without Freud and Nietzsche, I wouldn’t be who I am. But the author with whom I feel a special kinship is Roland Barthes, the Barthes of the 1970s who wrote beautifully personal books, such as A Lover’s Discourse and Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes. I was also drawn to Maggie Nelson’s style in The Argonauts. Yet somehow I wasn’t entirely ready to produce something like that. The lucidity of my writing style — all my years of striving to stay pedagogical — got in the way; I wasn’t able to replicate her more elusive style. Moreover, it felt important to develop a distinctive voice of my own: what came out was a hybrid text that contains bits of memoir, along with a great deal of theoretical reflection and cultural critique.

As a kind of flip side to that question: you’re often especially critical of thinkers for whom there’s a real split between their radical theoretical positions and their privileged way of life. You give the example of a prestigious academic complaining that his hotel isn’t nice enough right before delivering a lecture critiquing neoliberal capitalism. Priyamvada Gopal has used the term “critique-washing” to describe this kind of thing: being vitriolic in your critique of hegemonic systems as a way to mask the fact that you benefit from those same systems. In contrast, you’re extremely upfront about this uneasy sense of complicity. How do you negotiate that dilemma in your writing?

I admit that, in recent years, my pet peeve with my field — progressive critical theory, defined here loosely as a mixture of continental philosophy, French poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, and feminist and queer theory — has been its tendency to produce theoretical positions that sound radical and cool but are in fact completely unlivable. It’s like there’s this race to be on the cutting edge of the most extreme position conceivable. Yet most of the critics writing these treatises lead relatively normative, and often extremely privileged, lives.

But, frankly, intellectual generosity is a more comfortable style for me. Somehow I lost track of this around 2015, when I staged vicious critiques of some of the very colleagues from whom I’ve learned the most. I regret having done this: it’s not my place to tell anyone how to theorize. Still, in my own writing, I try to stick to ideas that I can live by. I like critical models that have real-life relevance.

One way in which this book seems especially current has to do with your critique of the crushing expectations that heteropatriarchy puts on women (to be adept in “the masquerade of femininity,” to be emotionally intelligent and sensitive to men’s supposed deficiencies), and the way that it lets men off the hook. A lot of feminist responses to talk of “the redistribution of sex” and “enforced monogamy” have made a similar point. Do you have a sense of why this disparity seems to be especially prevalent today?

This disparity has existed for a long time. And feminists have always complained about it. But now the problem has hit the collective consciousness of our society in ways that are making waves. If we stick to the North American context, one of the root causes of the problem is what I call “the gender obsession disorder”: the stubborn insistence on a clear-cut distinction between men and women. At the core of this disorder is the assumption that men are “naturally” more sexual than women and that women are “naturally” more emotional than men. Consequently, women end up doing more emotional labor because they’re expected to automatically know how to handle it — even though they have in reality had to go through a coercive process of social conditioning to gain the emotional intelligence that they may possess. Men, on the other hand, aren’t expected to pull their weight because they’re assumed to be incapable of emotional labor, like they’re expected to be incapable of doing the dishes without breaking your favorite plate. Sex, on the other hand, is supposedly “their” domain and the male sex drive is portrayed as a force of nature that’s in constant need of satisfaction. And depriving men of this satisfaction is presented as a betrayal of their inalienable rights.

Perhaps the most controversial chapter of my book has to do with the ways in which straight women are pressured to put up with their partners’ online porn consumption. I’m not making an argument about the morality of pornography or suggesting that it should be censored. I’ve always been a “pro-sex” feminist. But I think that we have reached a point where we have to admit that not all forms of sexuality are emancipatory. Most heteroporn, which is produced by multinational corporations, is a tool of what Foucault calls biopolitical conditioning: it teaches men that sex is — and should be — available to them at the click of the mouse. And if their girlfriend complains, too bad for her. She’s immediately labeled prudish, uptight, or anti-sex. So this is a situation where heteropatriarchy has reinvented itself to guarantee that men get what they want whereas what women want — in this case, porn-free sex lives — is deemed irrelevant.

Online heteroporn has changed the sex lives of millions of people, and while there are obviously women who happily participate in the phenomenon, my sense is that the change has been mostly at their expense. Not only does it make many women feel terrible about themselves when their partner prefers online porn to sex with them; women are also deprived of sex. The idea that women don’t need sex as much as men is a heteropatriarchal myth. And now that so many men are getting their sexual needs met online, women are left in the painful position of not knowing what to do with their sexuality. One option would be to join the porn consumers. But much of what’s available on the internet isn’t exactly female friendly. This is a topic that needs to explode on the social level, and soon, because it’s becoming too big a problem to hide. Too many women who are upset about it are afraid to complain. I think it’s high time to start complaining, and loudly.

One argument that emerges a few times in the book is the idea that, whereas consumerism is capitalism’s way of harnessing our desire for its own gain, writing (or creativity more broadly) can be a healthier or more authentic way for us to deal with our innate sense that we’re lacking creatures. Sheila Heti recently wrote a great piece in which she pointed out that shopping and writing are similar ways of articulating yourself by choosing things — products or words — but the way they make her feel is different in the end. Shopping makes her feel anxiety, and it’s never satisfying: as soon as what she’s ordered arrives, it loses its allure. But writing is more satisfying — maybe partly because it doesn’t promise once-and-for-all gratification of our desire. Our sense is that you’d agree with this. Why is writing a better way of responding to our lack and desire?

I agree with Sheila Heti. The most succinct way to explain the matter is through Jacques Lacan, who gives us two relevant concepts, namely that we’re all beings of lack and that we’re all filled with what he calls jouissance, an excess of drive energy. Lack causes desire and jouissance demands an outlet. Consumerism seems to offer a solution to both problems: you buy stuff to fill the void within your being and you exhaust yourself in the process. But usually the satisfaction that this brings doesn’t last. Writing, in contrast, gives you an endless resource for coping with both lack and jouissance. It doesn’t fill your lack in any definitive way, but words have a way of easing that sense of emptiness. And writing is an effective means of burning off excess energy: it both augments jouissance and consumes it so that it becomes more manageable. I don’t know about Sheila, but I feel the least anxious — the most “at home” with myself — when I’m writing. Both lack and excess jouissance recede so that there is space to just “be.”

Penis Envy is very critical of contemporary versions of love and romance. We were surprised by what felt like a dialing-back on the descriptions of love from The Singularity of Being. We’ve already touched on how writing and other acts of creativity provide a more reliable source of fulfillment. But do we always have to think of the two as separate? What if we think of love as a form of creativity — could it become something that might “enrich our existence” as sustainably as those artistic activities?

What may seem like a shift in my thinking about love is due to the fact that in Penis Envy I use a Foucauldian (biopolitical) lens to analyze love as a commercial enterprise whereas in my earlier books — such as The Singularity of Being — my lens was primarily Lacanian, with the result that my emphasis was on the transformative power of love, on what Alain Badiou calls the amorous event. I still believe in the amorous event. And I appreciate your idea that love can be a form of creativity, a form of artistic activity — an important part of “the art of living” that interests me. Your way of articulating the matter is one way to comprehend what Badiou means when he talks about staying faithful to the amorous event.

It’s true that one reason I thought that you might not like all aspects of the book is that I know that you’re in an exceptionally fulfilling and sustaining relationship. But my goal isn’t to disenchant love. It’s just that in Penis Envy, I examine how capitalism manages to turn love into a commodity, into the kind of “romance” that’s supposed to be safe and controllable. This, for me, is the very antithesis of the amorous event.

You’re very forthcoming in the book — generously, helpfully so — about your attachment to your “personal creation myth” and the fact that, as much as you might criticize the performance principle and the “good life,” you’ve also chosen productivity as a way of being. How do you balance the necessity of writing to live, and writing that brings with it ever more pressures to perform? Do you ever just want to withdraw from your professional obligations and merely write for writing’s sake?

My “personal creation myth” — the story of rising from the ashes that forms the backbone of the personal narrative that drives the text — is the thorniest part of the book. On the one hand, I’m critical of the American dream as an ideological ruse that places responsibility on individuals to succeed and brutally blames those who fall behind for not trying hard enough or performing well enough. This dream ignores the social inequalities that prevent many people from carving out livable lives for themselves. On the other hand, I can’t deny that the trajectory of my life has fallen within the parameters of the American dream: I grew up poor, in a house without running water, with parents who worked in low-paying and soul-slaying jobs, yet somehow I made my way to my current blessed life. There’s a lot of guilt I carry about this because I know that I was given the kinds of opportunities — such as a scholarship to Brown University — that my parents never had. So when I think of it, I cry, and I’m not sure if I’m crying because I made it, or because they couldn’t. And when I look at the ways in which many Americans are damaged by racism and other social impediments, I don’t know what to do. The one place where I feel I can perhaps make a difference is in the classroom, where I discuss structural social problems.

I’m extremely lucky that usually I get to write for writing’s sake. After my first book — which started as my dissertation — most of my writing hasn’t been out of professional obligation. So my “productivity” in the context of writing is more a matter of a personal compulsion: books sort of just leap out of me. They press on me. And they come out at different frequencies. I’ve written some strictly academic books, but I’ve also written “crossover” books — books that are aimed at both academic and mainstream readers. Penis Envy falls into this category.

The hard part is to ensure that the other obligations that are part of my job as a professor don’t close up the space of writing. There are long stretches when I can’t write because I have to attend to countless other demands. But when I hit a period when I’m free to write, I withdraw from the rest of life almost completely because the time for writing feels so precious.

Throughout the book, you offer a complex portrait of your relationship to the act of writing — as productivity, as pathology, and as living itself. You also suggest various conditions that make writing possible: cutting ties that feel “opaque,” decluttering one’s living space, forgetting the weight of the past. It was a surprising but illuminating moment when you admitted that only when you wrote those words — “lucidity, uncluttering, paring down” — did you see the connection between your life philosophy and your writing style. Now that you’ve found that connection, could you say more about this link between writing and paring down?

It was a surprising moment for me as well to realize that there’s a connection between my minimalist lifestyle and my lucid writing style. This realization made me even more determined to get rid of murkiness: no more ambiguous relationships; no more excess consumption of anything; no more clutter; and no more pining for a better life than the one I have because my life is better than I could ever have imagined. Giving up these other pursuits — and sequestering myself in an apartment with no internet access — creates space for writing, which, for me, for some enigmatic reason, feels like the key to my singular art of living.

Tajja Isen is a writer and voice actor. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in publications such as BuzzFeed, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, The Globe and Mail, and Catapult, where she is also a contributing editor.

Philip Sayers is a PhD candidate in English and Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto.

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